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THE EMANCIPATION OF 
MASSACHUSETTS 

THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 

BY 
BROOKS ADAMS 

Revised and Enlarged Edition 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

(Cbe IMMtx^ibt pcetf^ Cambci&se 
1919 



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COPYRIGHT, 18S7, 1915, AND 1919, BY BROOKS ADAMS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



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©CI.A53n803 



PREFATORY NOTE 
TO FIRST EDITION. 

I AM under the deepest obligations to the Hon. 
Mellen Chamberlain and Mr. Charles Deane. 

The generosity of my friend Mr. Frank Hamilton 
Cashing in putting at my disposal the unpublished 
results of his researches among the Zufiis is in keep- 
ing with the originality and power of his mind. With- 
out his aid my attempt would have been impossible. 
I have also to thank Prof. Henry C. Chapman, J. A. 
Gordon, M. D., Prof. William James, and Alpheus 
Hyatt, Esq., for the kindness with which they assisted 
me. I feel that any merit this volume may possess is 
due to these gentlemen ; its faults are all my own. 

BROOKS ADAMS. 
QuiNCY, September 17, 1886. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preface 3 



CHAPTER L 
The Commonwealth . .171 

CHAPTER II. 
The Antikomians 214 

CHAPTER III. 
The Cambridge Platform 249 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Anabaptists 275 

CHAPTER V. 
The Quakers 298 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Scibe Facias 349 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Witchcraft 386 

CHAPTER Vm. 
Brattle Church 407 



vi CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 
Harvabd College 425 

CHAPTER X. 
The Lawyers 456 

CHAPTER XI. 
The Revoltttion 484 



PREFACE 
TO NEW EDITION. 



PREFACE 
TO NEW EDITION. 

CHAPTER I. 

I WROTE this little volume more than thirty years 
ago, since when I have hardly opened it. Therefore 
I now read it almost as if it were written by another 
man, and I find to my relief that, on the whole, I think 
rather better of it than I did when I published it. In- 
deed, as a criticism of what were then the accepted 
views of Massachusetts history, as expounded by her 
most authoritative historians, I see nothing in it to 
retract or even to modify, I do, however, somewhat 
regret the rather acrimonious tone which I occasion- 
ally adopted when speaking of the more conservative 
section of the clergy. Not that I think that the 
Mathers, for example, and their like, did not deserve 
all, or, indeed, more than all I ever said or thought 
of them, but because I conceive that equally effective 
strictures might have been conveyed in urbaner lan- 
guage; and, as I age, I shrink from anything akin to 
invective, even in what amounts to controversy. 

Therefore I have now nothing to alter in the Eman- 
cipation of Massachusetts, viewed as history, though I 
might soften its asperities somewhat, here and there; 
but when I come to consider it as philosophy, I am 
startled to observe the gap which separates the present 
epoch from my early middle life. 



4 PREFACE. 

The last generation was strongly Darwinian in the 
sense that it accepted, almost as a tenet of religious 
faith, the theory that human civilization is a pro- 
gressive evolution, moving on the whole steadily 
toward perfection, from a lower to a higher intellectual 
plane, and, as a necessary part of its progress, develop- 
ing a higher degree of mental vigor. I need hardly 
observe that all belief in democracy as a final solution 
of social ills, all confidence in education as a means to 
attaining to universal justice, and all hope of approx- 
imating to the rule of moral right in the administra- 
tion of law, was held to hinge on this great funda- 
mental dogma, which, it followed, it was almost im- 
pious to deny, or even to doubt. Thus, on the first 
page of my book, I observe, as if it were axiomatic, 
that, at a given moment, toward the opening of the 
sixteenth century, "Europe burst from her mediaeval 
torpor into the splendor of the Renaissance," and 
further on I assume, as an equally self-evident axiom, 
that freedom of thought was the one great permanent 
advance which western civilization made by all the 
agony and bloodshed of the Reformation. Apart al- 
together from the fact that I should doubt whether, 
in the year 1919, any intelligent and educated man 
would be inclined to maintain that the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries were, as contrasted with the nine- 
teenth, ages of intellectual torpor, what startles me 
in these paragraphs is the self-satisfied assumption of 
the finality of my conclusions. I posit, as a fact not 
to be controverted, that our universe is an expression 



PREFACE. 5 

of an universal law, which the nineteenth century 
had discovered and could formulate. 

During the past thirty years I have given this sub- 
ject my best attention, and now I am so far from 
assenting to this proposition that my mind tends in 
the opposite direction. Each day I live I am less able 
to withstand the suspicion that the universe, far from 
being an expression of law originating in a single 
primary cause, is a chaos which admits of reaching 
no equilibrium, and with which man is doomed eter- 
nally and hopelessly to contend. For human society, to 
deserve the name of civilization, must be an embodi- 
ment of order, or must at least tend toward a social 
equilibrium. I take, as an illustration of my meaning, 
the development of the domestic relations of our race. 

I assume it to be generally admitted, that possibly 
man's first and probably his greatest advance toward 
order — and, therefore, toward civilization — was 
the creation of the family as the social nucleus. As 
Napoleon said, when the lawyers were drafting his 
Civil Code, " Make the family responsible to its head, 
and the head to me, and I will keep order in France." 
And yet although our dependence on the family sys- 
tem has been recognized in every age and in every 
land, there has been no restraint on personal liberty 
which has been more resented, by both men and women 
alike, than has been this bond which, when perfect, 
constrains one man and one woman to live a joint 
life until death shall them part, for the propagation, 
care, and defence of their children. 



6 PREFACE. 

The result is that no civiHzation has, as yet, ever 
succeeded, and none promises in the immediate future 
to succeed, in enforcing this primary obHgation, and 
we are thus led to consider the cause, inherent in our 
complex nature, which makes it impossible for us to 
establish an equilibrium between mind and matter. 
A difficulty which never has been even partially over- 
come, which wrecked the Roman Empire and the 
Christian Church, which has wrecked all systems of 
law, and which has never been more lucidly defined 
than by Saint Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, 
"For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am 
carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do, I allow 
not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, 
that do I. . . . Now then it is no more I that do it, but 
sin that dwelleth in me. . . . For the good that I would, 
I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. . . . 
For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 
. . . But I see another law in my members, warring 
against the law of my mind, and bringing me into 
captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me 
from the body of this death?" ^ 

And so it has been since a time transcending the 
limits of imagination. Here in a half-a-dozen sentences 
Saint Paul exposes the ceaseless conflict between mind 
and matter, whose union, though seemingly the 
essence of life, creates a condition which we cannot 
comprehend and to which we could not hope to con- 
^ Romans vii, 14-24. 



PREFACE. 7 

form, even if we could comprehend it. In short, which 
indicates chaos as being the probable core of an uni- 
verse from which we must evolve order, if ever we 
are to cope with violence, fraud, crime, war, and 
general brutality. Wheresoever we turn the prospect 
is the same. If we gaze upon the heavens we discern 
immeasurable spaces sprinkled with globules of mat- 
ter, to which our earth seems to be more or less akin, 
but all plunging, apparently, both furiously and aim- 
lessly, from out of an infinite past to an equally im- 
measurable future. 

Whence this material mass comes, or what its wild 
flight portends, we neither know nor could we, prob- 
ably, comprehend even were its secret divulged to us 
by a superior intelligence, always conceding that there 
be such an intelligence, or any secret to disclose. 
These latter speculations lie, however, beyond the 
scope of my present purpose. It suflSces if science 
permits me to postulate (a concession by science 
which I much doubt if it could make) that matter, as 
we know it, has the semblance of being what we call 
a substance, charged with a something which we 
define as energy, but which at all events simulates a 
vital principle resembling heat, seeking to escape into 
space, where it cools. Thus the stars, having blazed 
until their vital principle is absorbed in space, sink 
into relative torpor, or, as the astronomers say, die. 
The trees and plants diffuse their energy in the in- 
finite, and, at length, when nothing but a shell re- 
mains, rot. Lastly, our fleshly bodies, when the union 



8 PREFACE. 

between mind and matter is dissolved, crumble into 
dust. When the involuntary partnership between mind 
and matter ceases through death, it is possible, or at 
least conceivable, that the impalpable soul, admitting 
that such a thing exists, may survive in some medium 
where it may be free from material shackles, but, 
while life endures, the flesh has wants which must be 
gratified, and which, therefore, take precedence of the 
yearnings of the soul, just as Saint Paul points out 
was the case with himself; and herein lies the inex- 
orable conflict between the moral law and the law 
of competition which favors the strong, and from 
whence comes all the abominations of selfishness, of 
violence, of cruelty and crime. 

Approached thus, perhaps no historical fragment 
is more suggestive than the exodus of the Jews from 
Egypt under Moses, who was the first great optimist, 
nor one which is seldomer read with an eye to the con- 
trast which it discloses between Moses the law-giver, 
the idealist, the religious prophet, and the visionary; 
and Moses the political adventurer and the keen and 
unscrupulous man of the world. And yet it is here 
at the point at which mind and matter clashed, that 
Moses merits most attention. For Moses and the 
Mosaic civilization broke down at this point, which 
is, indeed, the chasm which has engulfed every pro- 
gressive civilization since the dawn of time. And the 
value of the story as an illustration of scientific his- 
tory is its familiarity, for no Christian child lives who 
has not been brought up on it. 



PREFACE. 9 

We have all forgotten when we first learned how the 
Jews came to migrate to Egypt during the years of 
the famine, when Joseph had become the minister of 
Pharaoh through his acuteness in reading dreams. 
Also how, after their settlement in the land of Goshen, 
— which is the Egyptian province lying at the end of 
the ancient caravan road, which Abraham travelled, 
leading from Palestine to the banks of the Nile, and 
which had been the trade route, or path of least re- 
sistance, between Asia and Africa, probably for ages 
before the earliest of human traditions, — they pros- 
pered exceedingly. But at length they fell into a spe- 
cies of bondage which lasted several centuries, during 
which they multipUed so rapidly that they finally 
raised in the Egyptian government a fear of their 
domination. Nor, considering subsequent events, was 
this apprehension unreasonable. At all events the 
Egyptian government is represented, as a measure of 
self-protection, as proposing to kill male Jewish babies 
in order to reduce the Jewish military strength; and 
it was precisely at this juncture that Moses was born. 
Moses, indeed, escaped the fate which menaced him, 
but only by a narrow chance, and he was nourished 
by his mother in an atmosphere of hate which tinged 
his whole life, causing him always to feel to the Egyp- 
tians as the slave feels to his master. After birth the 
mother hid the child as long as possible, but when she 
could conceal the infant no longer she platted a basket 
of reeds, smeared it with pitch, and set it adrift in the 
Nile, where it was likely to be found, leaving her eld- 



10 PREFACE. 

est daughter, named Miriam, to watch over it. _ Pres- 
ently Pharaoh's daughter came, as was her habit, to 
the river to bathe, as Moses's mother expected that 
she would, and there she noticed the "ark" floating 
among the bulrushes. She had it brought her, and, 
noticing Miriam, she caused the girl to engage her 
mother, whom Miriam pointed out to h^r, as a nurse. 
Taking pity on the baby the kind-hearted princess 
adopted it and brought it up as she would had it been 
her own, and, as the child grew, she came to love the 
boy, and had him educated with care, and this edu- 
cation must be kept in mind since the future of Moses 
as a man turned upon it. For Moses was most pe- 
culiarly a creation of his age and of his environment; 
if, indeed, he may not be considered as an incarna- 
tion of Jewish thought gradually shaped during many 
centuries of priestly development. 

According to tradition, Moses from childhood was 
of great personal beauty, so much so that passers by 
would turn to look at him, and this early promise was 
fulfilled as he grew to be a man. Tall and dignified, 
with long, shaggy hair and beard, of a reddish hue 
tinged with gray, he is described as "wise as beauti- 
ful." Educated by his foster-mother as a priest at 
Heliopolis, he was taught the whole range of Chaldean 
and Assyrian literature, as well as the Egyptian, and 
thus became acquainted with all the traditions of 
oriental magic: which, just at that period, was in its 
fullest development. Consequently, Moses must have 
been familiar with the doctrines of Zoroaster. 



PREFACE. 11 

Men who stood thus, and had such an education, 
were called Wise Men, Magi, or Magicians, and had 
great influence, not so much as priests of a God, as 
enchanters who dealt with the supernatural as a pro- 
fession. Daniel, for example, belonged to this class. 
He was one of three captive Jews whom Nebuchad- 
nezzar, King of Babylon, gave in charge to the master 
of his eunuchs, to whom he should teach the learning 
and the tongue of the Chaldeans. Daniel, very shortly, 
by his natural ability, brought himself and his com- 
rades into favor with the chief eunuch, who finally 
presented them to Nebuchadnezzar, who conversed 
with them and found them "ten times better than all 
the magicians and astrologers that were in all his 
realm." 

The end of it was, of course, that Nebuchadnezzar 
dreamed a dream which he forgot when he awoke and 
he summoned "the magicians, and the astrologers, 
and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans, for to shew the 
king his dreams," but they could not unless he told 
it them. This vexed the king, who declared that 
unless they should tell him his dream with the inter- 
pretation thereof, they should be cut in pieces. So the 
decree went forth that all "the wise men" of Babylon 
should be slain, and they sought Daniel and his fellows 
to slay them. Therefore, it appears that together 
with its privileges and advantages the profession of 
magic was dangerous in those ages. Daniel, on this 
occasion, according to the tradition, succeeded in 
revealing and interpreting the dream; and, in return. 



12 PREFACE. 

Nebuchadnezzar made Daniel a great man, chief 
governor of the province of Babylon. 

Precisely a similar tale is told of Joseph, who, hav- 
ing been sold by his brethren to Midianitish merchant- 
men with camels, bearing spices and balm, journeying 
along the ancient caravan road toward Egypt, was in 
turn sold by them to Potiphar, the captain of Pha- 
raoh's guard. 

And Joseph rose in Potiphar 's service, and after 
many alternations of fortune was brought before 
Pharaoh, as Daniel had been before Nebuchadnezzar, 
and because he interpreted Pharaoh's dream accept- 
ably, he was made "ruler over all the land of Egypt" 
and so ultimately became the ancestor whom Moses 
most venerated and whose bones he took with him 
when he set out upon the exodus. 

It is true also that Josephus has preserved an idle 
tale that Moses was given command of an Egyptian 
army with which he made a successful campaign 
against the Ethiopians, but it is unworthy of credit 
and may be neglected. His bringing up was indeed 
the reverse of military. So much so that probably far 
the most important part of his education lay in ac- 
quiring those arts which conduce to the deception of 
others, such deceptions as jugglers have always prac- 
tised in snake-charming and the like, or in gaining 
control of another's senses by processes akin to hyp- 
notism; — processes which have been used by the 
priestly class and their familiars from the dawn of 
time. In especial there was one miracle performed 



PREFACE, 13 

by the Magi, on which not only they, but Moses him- 
self, appear to have set great store, and on which 
Moses seemed always inclined to fall back, when 
hard pressed to assert his authority. They pretended 
to make fire descend onto their altars by means of 
magical ceremonies.^ Nevertheless, amidst all these 
ancient eastern civilizations, the strongest hold which 
the priests or sorcerers held over, and the greatest 
influence which they exercised upon, others, lay in 
their relations to disease, for there they were sup- 
posed to be potent. For example, in Chaldea, diseases 
were held to be the work of demons, to be feared in 
proportion as they were powerful and malignant, 
and to be restrained by incantations and exorcisms. 
Among these demons the one, perhaps most dreaded, 
was called Namtar, the genius of the plague. Moses 
was, of course, thoroughly familiar with all these 
branches of learning, for the relations of Egypt were 
then and for many centuries had been, intimate with 
Mesopotamia. Whatever aspect the philosophy may 
have, which Moses taught after middle life touching 
the theory of the religion in which he believed, Moses 
had from early childhood been nurtured in these 
Mesopotamian beliefs and traditions, and to them — 
or, at least, toward them — he always tended to re- 
vert in moments of stress. Without bearing this 
fundamental premise in mind, Moses in active life 
can hardly be understood, for it was on this founda- 
tion that his theories of cause and effect were based. 
^ Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, 226. 



14 PREFACE. 

As M. Lenormant has justly and truly observed, 
go back as far as we will in Egyptian religion, we find 
there, as a foundation, or first cause, the idea of a 
divine unity, — a single God, who had no beginning 
and was to have no end of days, — the primary cause 
of all.^ It is true that this idea of unity was early 
obscured by confounding the energy with its mani- 
festations. Consequently a polytheism was engen- 
dered which embraced all nature. Gods and demons 
struggled for control and in turn were struggled 
with. In Egypt, in Media, in Chaldea, in Persia, 
there were wise men, sorcerers, and magicians who 
sought to put this science into practice, and among 
this fellowship Moses must always rank foremost. 
Before, however, entering upon the consideration of 
Moses, as a necromancer, as a scientist, as a states- 
man, as a priest, or as a commander, we should first 
glance at the authorities which tell his history. 

Scholars are now pretty well agreed that Moses and 
Aaron were men who actually lived and worked prob- 
ably about the time attributed to them by tradition. 
That is to say, under the reign of Ramses II, of the 
Nineteenth Egyptian dynasty who reigned, as it is 
computed, from 1348 to 1281 B.C., and under whom 
the exodus occurred. Nevertheless, no very direct or 
conclusive evidence having as yet been discovered 
touching these events among Egyptian documents, 
we are obliged, in the main, to draw our information 
from the Hebrew record, which, for the most part, 

1 Chaldean Magic, 79. 



PREFACE. 15 

is contained in the Pentateuch, or the first five books 
of the Bible. 

Possibly no historical documents have ever been 
subjected to a severer or more minute criticism than 
have these books during the last two centuries. It is 
safe to say that no important passage and perhaps 
no paragraph has escaped the most searching and 
patient analysis by the acutest and most highly 
trained of minds; but as yet, so far as the science of 
history is concerned, the results have been disappoint- 
ing. The order in which events occurred may have 
been successfully questioned and the sequence of the 
story rearranged hypothetically; but, in general, it 
has to be admitted that the weight of all the evidence 
obtained from the monuments of contemporary peo- 
ples has been to confirm the reliability of the Biblical 
narrative. For example, no one longer doubts that 
Joseph was actually a Hebrew, who rose, through 
merit, to the highest offices of state under an Egyp- 
tian monarch, and who conceived and successfully 
carried into execution a comprehensive agrarian policy 
which had the effect of transferring the landed estates 
of the great feudal aristocracy to the crown, and of 
completely changing Egyptian tenures. Nor does any 
one question, at this day, the reality of the power 
which the Biblical writers ascribed to the Empire of 
the Hittites. Under such conditions the course of the 
commentator is clear. He should treat the Jewish 
record as reliable, except where it frankly accepts the 
miracle as a demonstrated fact, and even then re- 



16 PREFACE. 

gard the miracle as an important and most suggestive 
part of the great Jewish epic, which always has had, 
and always must have, a capital influence on human 
thought. 

The Pentateuch has, indeed, been demonstrated to 
be a compilation of several chronicles arranged by 
different writers at different times, and blended into 
a unity under different degrees of pressure, but now, 
as the book stands, it is as authentic a record as could 
be wished of the workings of the Mosaic mind and of 
the minds of those of his followers who supported him 
in his pilgrimage, and who made so much of his task 
possible, as he in fact accomplished. 

Moses, himself, but for the irascibility of his temper, 
might have lived and died, contented and unknown, 
within the shadow of the Egyptian court. The princess 
who befriended him as a baby would probably have 
been true to him to the end, in which case he would 
have lived wealthy, contented, and happy and would 
have died overfed and unknown. Destiny, however, 
had planned it otherwise. 

The Hebrews were harshly treated after the death 
of Joseph, and fell into a quasi-bondage in which they 
were forced to labor, and this species of tyranny irri- 
tated Moses, who seems to have been brought up 
under his mother's influence. At all events, one day 
Moses chanced to see an Egyptian beating a Jew, 
which must have been a common enough sight, but a 
sight which revolted him. Whereupon Moses, think- 
ing himself alone, slew the Egyptian and hid his body 



PREFACE. 17 

in the sand. Moses, however, was not alone. A day or 
so later he again happened to see two men fighting, 
whereupon he again interfered, enjoining the one who 
was in the wrong to desist. Whereupon the man whom 
he checked turned fiercely on him and said, "Who 
made thee a prince and a judge over us? Intendest 
thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian.^*" 

When Moses perceived by this act of treachery on 
the part of a countryman, whom he had befriended, 
that nothing remained to him but flight, he started in 
the direction of southern Arabia, toward what was 
called the Land of Midian, and which, at the moment, 
seems to have lain beyond the limits of the Egyptian 
administrative system, although it had once been one 
of its most prized metallurgical regions. Just at that 
time it was occupied by a race called the Kenites, who 
were more or less closely related to the Amalekites, 
who were Bedouins and who relied for their living 
upon their flocks, as the Israelites had done in the 
time of Abraham. Although Arabia Patrea was then, 
in the main, a stony waste, as it is now, it was not 
quite a desert. It was crossed by trade routes in many 
directions along which merchants travelled to Egypt, 
as is described in the story of Joseph, whose brethren 
seized him in Dothan, and as they sat by the side of 
the pit in which they had thrown him, they saw a 
company of Ishmaelites who came from Gilead and 
who journeyed straight down from Damascus to 
Gilead and from thence to Hebron, along the old 
caravan road, toward Egypt, with camels bearing 



18 PREFACE. 

spices and myrrh, as had been their custom since long 
beyond human tradition, and which had been the 
road along which Abraham had travelled before them, 
and which was still watered by his wells. This was the 
famous track from Beersheba to Hebron, where Hagar 
was abandoned with her baby Ishmael, and if the 
experiences of Hagar do not prove that the wilderness 
of Shur was altogether impracticable for women and 
children it does at least show that for a mixed multi- 
tude without trustworthy guides or reliable sources 
of supply, the country was not one to be lightly 
attempted. 

It was into a region similar to this, only somewhat 
further to the south, that Moses penetrated after his 
homicide, travelling alone and as an unknown ad- 
venturer, dressed like an Egyptian, and having noth- 
ing of the nomad about him in his looks. As Moses 
approached Sinai, the country grew wilder and more 
lonely, and Moses one day sal himself down, by the 
side of a well whither shepherds were wont to drive 
their flocks to water. For shepherds came there, and 
also shepherdesses; among others were the seven 
daughters of Jethro, the priest of Midian, who came 
to water their father's flocks. But the shepherds 
drove them away and took the water for themselves. 
Whereupon Moses defended the girls and drew water 
for them and watered their flocks. This naturally 
pleased the young women, and they took Moses home 
with them to their father's tent, as Bedouins still 
would do. And when they came to their father, he 



PREFACE. 19 

asked how it chanced that they came home so early 
that day. "And they said, an Egyptian dehvered us 
out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water 
enough for us, and watered the flock." And Jethro 
said, "Where is he? Why is it that ye have left the 
man.'^ Call him that he may eat bread." 

"And Moses was content to dwell with" Jethro, 
who made him his chief shepherd and gave him 
Zipporah, his daughter. And she bore him a son. 
Seemingly, time passed rapidly and happily in this 
peaceful, pastoral life, which, according to the tra- 
dition preserved by Saint Stephen, lasted forty years, 
but be the time long or short, it is clear that Moses 
loved and respected Jethro and was in return valued 
by him. Nor coula anything have been more natural, 
for Moses was a man who made a deep impression at 
first sight — an impression which time strengthened. 
Intellectually he must have been at least as notable 
as in personal appearance, for his education at Helio- 
polis set him apart from men whom Jethro would 
have been apt to meet in his nomad life. But if 
Moses had strong attractions for Jethro, Jethro drew 
Moses toward himself at least as strongly in the 
position in which Moses then stood. Jethro, though 
a child of the desert, was the chief of a tribe or at 
least of a family, a man used to command, and to 
administer the nomad law; for Jethro was the head 
of the Kenites, who were akin to the Amalekites, 
with whom the Israelites were destined to wage mortal 
war. And for Moses this was a most important 



20 PREFACE. 

connection, for Moses after his exile never permitted 
his relations with his own people in Egypt to lapse. 
The possibility of a Jewish revolt, of which his own 
banishment was a precursor, was constantly in his 
mind. To Moses a Jewish exodus from Egypt was 
always imminent. For centuries it had been a dream 
of the Jews. Indeed it was an article of faith with 
them. Joseph, as he sank in death, had called his 
descendants about him and made them solemnly 
swear to "carry his bones hence." And to that end 
Joseph had caused his body to be embalmed and put 
in a coffin that all might be ready when the day came. 
Moses knew the tradition and felt himself bound by 
the oath and waited in Midian with confidence until 
the moment of performance should come. Presently 
it did come. Very probably before he either expected 
or could have wished it, and actually, as almost his 
first act of leadership, Moses did carry the bones of 
Joseph with him when he crossed the Red Sea. Moses 
held the tradition to be a certainty. He never con- 
ceived it to be a matter of possible doubt, nor prob- 
ably was it so. There was in no one's mind a question 
touching Joseph's promise nor about his expectation 
of its fulfilment. What Moses did is related in Exodus 
XIII, 19: "And Moses took the bones of Joseph with 
him; for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, 
saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry 
up my bones away hence with you." 

In fine, Moses, in the solitude of the Arabian wil- 
derness, in his wanderings as the shepherd of Jethro, 



PRE FA CE. 21 

came to believe that his destiny was Hnked with that 
of his countrymen in a revolution which was certain 
to occur before they could accomplish the promise of 
Joseph and escape from Egypt under the guidance of 
the god who had befriended and protected him. More- 
over, Moses was by no means exclusively a religious 
enthusiast. He was also a scientific man, after the 
ideas of that age. Moses had a high degree of educa- 
tion and he was familiar with the Egyptian and 
Chaldean theory of a great and omnipotent prime 
motor, who had had no beginning and should have no 
end. He was also aware that this theory was obscured 
by the intrusion into men's minds of a multitude of 
lesser causes, in the shape of gods and demons, who 
mixed themselves in earthly affairs and on whose 
sympathy or malevolence the weal or woe of human 
life hinged. Pondering deeply on these things as he 
roamed, he persuaded himself that he had solved the 
riddle of the universe, by identifying the great first 
cause of all with the deity who had been known to his 
ancestors, whose normal home was in the promised 
land of Canaan, and who, beside being all-powerful, 
was also a moral being whose service must tend toward 
the welfare of mankind. For Moses was by tempera- 
ment a moralist in whom such abominations as those 
practised in the worship of Moloch created horror. 
He knew that the god of Abraham would tolerate no 
such wickedness as this, because of the fate of Sodom 
on much less provocation, and he believed that were 
he to lead the Israelites, as he might lead them, he 



22 PREFACE. 

could propitiate such a deity, could he but by an 
initial success induce his congregation to obey the 
commands of a god strong enough to reward them for 
leading a life which should be acceptable to him. All 
depended, therefore, should the opportunity of leader- 
ship come to him, on his being able, in the first place, 
to satisfy himself that the god who presented himself 
to him was verily the god of Abraham, who burned 
Sodom, and not some demon, whose object was to vex 
mankind: and, in the second place, assuming that he 
himself were convinced of the identity of the god, that 
he could convince his countrymen of the fact, and also 
of the absolute necessity of obedience to the moral 
law which he should declare, since without absolute 
obedience, they would certainly merit, and probably 
suffer, such a fate as befell the inhabitants of Sodom, 
under the very eyes of Abraham, and in spite of his 
prayers for mercy. 

There was one other apprehension which may have 
troubled, and probably did trouble, Moses. The god 
of the primitive man, and certainly of the Bedouin, is 
usually a local deity whose power and whose activity 
is limited to some particular region, as, for instance, a 
mountain or a plain. Thus the god of Abraham might 
have inhabited and absolutely ruled the plain of 
Mamre and been impotent elsewhere. But this, had 
Moses for a moment harbored such a notion, would 
have been dispelled when he thought of Joseph. 
Joseph, when his brethren threw him into the pit, 
must have been under the guardianship of the god of 



PREFACE. 23 

his fathers, and when he was drawn out, and sold in 
the ordinary course of the slave-trade, he was bought 
by Potiphar, the captain of the guard. "And the 
Lord was with Joseph and he was a prosperous man." 
Thenceforward, Joseph had a wonderful career. He 
received in a dream a revelation of what the weather 
was to be for seven years to come. And by this dream 
he was able to formulate a policy for establishing pub- 
lic graineries like those which were maintained in 
Babylon, and by means of these graineries, ably ad- 
ministered, the crown was enabled to acquire the 
estates of the great feudatories, and thus the whole 
social system of Egypt was changed. And Joseph, 
from being a poor waif, cast away by his brethren in 
the wilderness, became the foremost man in Egypt 
and the means of settling his compatriots in the 
province of Gotham, where they still lived when 
Moses fled from Egypt. Such facts had made a pro- 
found impression upon the mind of Moses, who very 
reasonably looked upon Joseph as one of the most 
wonderful men who had ever lived, and one who 
could not have succeeded as he succeeded, without 
the divine interposition. But if the god who did these 
things could work such miracles in Egypt, his power 
was not confined by local boundaries, and his power 
could be trusted in the desert as safely as it could be 
on the plain of Mamre or elsewhere. The burning of 
Sodom was a miracle equally in point to prove the 
stern morality of the god. And that also, was a fact, 
as incontestable, to the mind of Moses, as was the 



24 PREFACE. 

rising of the sun upon the morning of each day. He 
knew, as we know of the battle of Great Meadows, 
that one day his ancestor Abraham, when sitting in 
the door of his tent toward noon, "in the plain of 
Mamre," at a spot not far from Hebron and perfectly 
familiar to every traveller along the old caravan road 
hither, on looking up observed three men standing 
before him, one of whom he recognized as the "Lord." 
Then it dawned on Abraham that the "Lord" had 
not come without a purpose, but had dropped in for 
dinner, and Abraham ran to meet them, "and bowed 
himself toward the ground." And he said, "Let a 
little water be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest 
yourselves under the tree: And I will fetch a morsel 
of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that you 
shall pass on." "And Abraham ran unto the herd, 
and fetcht a calf tender and good, and gave it unto a 
young man; and he hasted to dress it. And he took 
butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, 
and set it before them; and he stood by them under 
the tree, and they did eat." Meanwhile, Abraham 
asked no questions, but waited until the object of the 
visit should be disclosed. In due time he succeeded in 
his purpose. "And they said unto him. Where is 
Sarah thy wife? And he said. Behold, in the tent. 
And he [the Lord] said, . . . Sarah thy wife shall have 
a son. . . . Now Abraham and Sarah were old, and 
well stricken in age." At this time Abraham was 
about one hundred years old, according to the tra- 
dition, and Sarah was proportionately amused, and 



PREFACE. 25 

"laughed within herself." This mirth vexed "the 
Lord," who did not treat his words as a joke, but 
asked, "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" Then 
Sarah took refuge in a He, and denied that she had 
laughed. But the lie helped her not at all, for the 
Lord insisted, "Nay, but thou didst laugh." And this 
incident broke up the party. The men rose and 
"looked toward Sodom": and Abraham strolled with 
them, to show them the way. And then the "Lord" 
debated with himself whether to make a confidant of 
Abraham touching his resolution to destroy Sodom 
utterly. And finally he decided that he would, "be- 
cause the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great and 
because their sin is very grievous." Whereupon 
Abraham intervened, and an argument ensued, and 
at length God admitted that he had been too hasty 
and promised to think the matter over. And finally, 
when "the Lord" had reduced the number of right- 
eous for whom the city should be saved to ten, Abra- 
ham allowed him to go " his way . . . and Abraham 
returned to his place." 

In the evening of the same day two angels came to 
Sodom, who met Lot at the gate, and Lot took them 
to his house and made them a feast and they did eat. 
Then it happened that the mob surrounded Lot's 
house and demanded that the strangers should be 
delivered up to them. But Lot successfully defended 
them. And in the morning the angels warned Lot to 
escape, but Lot hesitated, though finally he did es- 
cape to Zoar. 



26 PREFACE. 

"Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon 
Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of 
heaven." 

"And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the 
place where he stood before the Lord: 

"And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, 
and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, 
lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of 
a furnace." 

We must always remember, in trying to reconstruct 
the past, that these traditions were not matters of 
possible doubt to Moses, or indeed to any Israelite. 
They were as well established facts to them as would 
be the record of volcanic eruptions now. Therefore it 
would not have astonished Moses more that the Lord 
should meet him on the slope of Horeb, than that the 
Lord should have met his ancestor Abraham on the 
plain of Mamre. Moses' doubts and perplexities lay 
in another direction. Moses did not question, as did 
his great ancestress, that his god could do all he 
promised, if he had the will. His anxiety lay in his 
doubt as to God's steadiness of purpose supposing he 
promised; and this doubt was increased by his lack 
of confidence in his own countrymen. The god of 
Abraham was a requiring deity with a high moral 
standard, and the Hebrews were at least in part some- 
what akin to a horde of semi-barbarous nomads, much 
more likely to fall into offences resembling those of 
Sodom than to render obedience to a code which 
would strictly conform to the requirements which 



PREFACE. 27 

alone would ensure Moses support, supposing he 
accepted a task which, after all, without divine aid, 
might prove to be impossible to perform. 

When the proposition which Moses seems, more or 
less confidently, to have expected to be made to him 
by the Lord, came, it came very suddenly and very 
emphatically. 

"Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in- 
law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the 
backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of 
God, even to Horeb. 

"And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in 
a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush : and he looked, 
and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush 
was not consumed." 

And Moses, not, apparently, very much excited, 
said, "I will now turn aside, and see this great sight." 
But "God called unto him out of the midst of the 
bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said. Here am 
I." Then the voice commanded him to put off his 
shoes from off his feet, for the place he stood on was 
holy ground. 

"Moreover," said the voice, "I am the God of thy 
father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and 
the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was 
afraid to look upon God. 

" And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction 
of my people . . . and have heard their cry by reason 
of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows. 

"And I am come down to deliver them out of the 



28 PREFACE. 

hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of 
that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land 
flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the 
Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and 
the Perizzites. . . . 

"Come now, therefore, and I will send thee unto 
Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people, the 
children of Israel, out of Egypt. 

"And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I 
should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring 
forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? . . . And 
Moses said unto God, Behold, when I am come unto 
the children of Israel, and shall say unto them. The 
God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they 
shall say to me. What is his name? what shall I say 
unto them? 

"And God said unto Moses, I am That I Am; and 
he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of 
Israel, / Am hath sent me unto you. 

"And God said, moreover, unto Moses, Thus shalt 
thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of 
your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, 
and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is 
my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all 
generations." 

Then the denizen of the bush renewed his instruc- 
tions and his promises, assuring Moses that he would 
bring him and his following out of the land of afflic- 
tion of Egypt and into the land of the Canaanites, 
and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and others, unto 



PREFACE. 29 

a land flowing v/ith milk and honey. In a word to 
Palestine. And he insisted to Moses that he should 
gain an entrance to Pharaoh, and that he should tell 
him that "the Lord God of the Hebrews hath met 
with us: and now let us go, we beseech thee, three 
days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacri- 
fice to the Lord our God." 

Also God did not pretend to Moses that the King 
of Egypt would forthwith let them go; whereupon he 
would work his wonders in Egypt and after that 
Pharaoh would let them go. 

Moreover, he promised, as an inducement to their 
avarice, that they should not go empty away, for that 
the Lord God would give the Hebrews favor in the sight 
of the Egyptians, "so that every woman should borrow 
of her neighbor, and of her that sojourneth in her 
house, jewels of silver, jewels of gold, and raiment," 
and that they should spoil the Egyptians. But all this 
time God did not disclose his name; so Moses tried 
another way about. If he would not tell his name he 
might at least enable Moses to work some wonder 
which should bring conviction to those who saw it, 
even if the god remained nameless. For Moses ap- 
preciated the difficulty of the mission suggested to 
him. How was he, a stranger in Egj^pt, to gain the 
confidence of that mixed and helpless multitude, 
whom he was trying to persuade to trust to his guid- 
ance in so apparently desperate an enterprise as 
crossing a broad and waterless waste, in the face of a 
well-armed and vigorous foe. Moses apprehended 



30 PREFACE. 

that there was but one way in which he could by 
possibiHty succeed. He might prevail by convincing 
the Israelites that he was commissioned by the one 
deity whom they knew, who was likely to have both 
the will and the power to aid them, and that was the 
god who had visited Abraham on the plain of Mamre, 
who had destroyed Sodom for its iniquity, and who 
had helped Joseph to become the ruler of Egypt. 
Joseph above all was the man who had made to his 
descendants that solemn promise on whose faith 
Moses was, at that very moment, basing his hopes of 
deliverance; for Joseph had assured the Israelites in 
the most solemn manner that the god who had aided 
him would surely visit them, and that they should 
carry his bones away with them to the land he prom- 
ised. That land was the land to which Moses wished 
to guide them. Now Moses was fully determined to 
attempt no such project as this unless the being who 
spoke from the bush would first prove to him, Moses, 
that he was the god he purported to be, and should 
beside give Moses credentials which should be con- 
vincing, by which Moses could prove to the Jews in 
Egypt that he was no impostor himself, nor had he 
been deceived by a demon. Therefore Moses went on 
objecting as strongly as at first: 

"And Moses answered and said, But behold they 
will not believe me, nor hearken to my voice; for they 
will say, the Lord hath not appeared unto thee." 

Then the being in the bush proceeded to submit his 
method of proof, which was of a truth feeble, and 



PREFACE. 31 

which Moses rejected as feeble. A form of proof 
which never fully convinced him, and which, in his 
judgment could not be expected to convince others, 
especially men so educated and intelligent as the 
Egyptians. For the Lord had nothing better to sug- 
gest than the ancient trick of the snake-charmer, and 
even the possessor of the voice seems implicitly to 
have admitted that this could hardly be advanced as 
a convincing miracle. So the Lord proposed two 
other tests: the first was that Moses should have his 
hand smitten with leprous sores and restored imme- 
diately by hiding it from sight in "his bosom." And in 
the event that this test left his audience still sceptical, 
he was to dip Nile water out of the river, and turn it 
into blood on land. 

Moses at all these three proposals remained cold as 
before. And with good reason, for Moses had been 
educated as a priest in Egypt, and he knew that 
Egyptian "wise men" could do as well, and even 
better, if it came to a magical competition before 
Pharaoh. And Moses had evidently no relish for a 
contest in the presence of his countrymen as to the 
relative quality of his magic. Therefore, he objected 
once more on another ground: "I am not eloquent, 
neither heretofore nor since thou hast spoken unto 
thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow 
tongue." This continued hesitancy put the Lord out 
of patience; who retorted sharply, "Who hath made 
man's mouth.'' or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or 
the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord? 



32 PREFACE. 

"Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, 
and teach thee what thou shalt say." 

Then Moses made his last effort. "O my Lord, 
send, I pray thee, by the hand of him whom thou 
wilt send." Wliich was another way of saying, Send 
whom you please, but leave me to tend Jethro's flock 
m Midian. 

"And the anger of the Lord was kindled against 
Moses; and he said. Is not Aaron the Levite thy 
brother.'* I know that he can speak well. And also, 
behold, he cometh forth to meet thee; and when he 
seeth thee, he will be glad in his heart. 

"And he shall be, ... to thee instead of a mouth, 
and thou shalt be to him instead of God." 

Then Moses, not seeming to care very much what 
Aaron might think about the matter, went to Jethro, 
and related what had happened to him on the moun- 
tain, and asked for leave to go home to Egypt, and see 
how matters stood there. And Jethro listened, and 
seems to have thought the experiment worth trying, 
for he answered, "Go in peace." 

"And the Lord said unto Moses," — but where is 
not stated, probably in Midian, — "Go, return into 
Egypt," which you may do safely, for all the men are 
dead which sought thy life. 

"And Moses took his wife and his sons, and set 
them upon an ass, and he returned to the land of 
Egypt. And Moses took the rod of God in his hand." 

It was after this, apparently, that Aaron travelled 
to meet Moses in Midian, and Moses told Aaron what 



PREFACE. 33 

had occurred, and performed his tests, and, seemingly, 
convinced him; for then Moses and Aaron went to- 
gether into Egypt and called the elders of the children 
of Israel together, "and did the signs in the sight of 
the people. And the people believed: and . . . bowed 
their heads and worshipped." Meanwhile God had 
not, as yet, revealed his name. But as presently mat- 
ters came to a crisis between Moses and Pharaoh, he 
did so. He said to Moses, "I am the Lord: 

"I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto 
Jacob, by the name of God Almighty; but by my 
name Jehovah was I not known to them. . . . 

"Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am 
the Lord. . . . And I will bring you in unto the land, 
concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abra- 
ham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you 
for an heritage: I am the Lord. 

"And Moses spake so unto the children of Israel: 
but they hearkened not unto Moses, for anguish of 
spirit, and for cruel bondage. . . . 

"And Moses spake before the Lord, saying, Behold 
the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me; 
how then shall Pharaoh hear me.'*" And from this 
form of complaint against his countrymen until his 
death Moses never ceased. 

Certain modern critics have persuaded themselves 
to reject this whole Biblical narrative as the product 
of a later age and of a maturer civilization, contend- 
ing that it would be childish to attribute the reason- 
ing of the Pentateuch to primitive Bedouins like the 



34 PREFACE. 

patriarchs or like the Jews who followed Moses into 
the desert. Setting aside at once the philological dis- 
cussion as to whether the language of the Pentateuch 
could have been used by Moses, and admitting for the 
sake of argument that Moses did not either himself 
write, or dictate to another, any part of the documents 
in question, it would seem that the application of a 
little common sense would show pretty conclusively 
that Moses throughout his whole administrative life 
acted upon a single scientific theory of the application 
of a supreme energy to the afiFairs of life, and upon the 
belief that he had discovered what that energj' was 
and understood how to control it. 

His syllogism amounted to this: 

Facts, which are admitted by all Hebrews, prove 
that the single dominant power in the world is the 
being who revealed himself to our ancestors, and who, 
in particular, guided Joseph into Egypt, protected 
him there, and raised him to an eminence never before 
or since reached by a Jew. It can also be proved, by 
incontrovertible facts, that this being is a moral being, 
who can be placated by obedience and by attaining 
to a certain moral standard in life, and by no other 
means. That this standard has been disclosed to me, 
I can prove to you by sundry miraculous signs. There- 
fore, be obedient and obey the law which I shall pro- 
mulgate "that ye may prosper in all that ye do." 

Indeed, the philosophy of Moses was of the sternly 

• practical kind, resembling that of Benjamin Franklin. 

He did not promise his people, as did the Egyptians, 



PREFACE. 35 

felicity in a future life. He confined himself to pros- 
perity in this world. And to succeed in his end he set 
an attainable standard. A standard no higher cer- 
tainly than that accepted by the Egj^ptians, as it is 
set forth in the 125th chapter of the Book of the Dead, 
a standard to which the soul of any dead man had to 
attain before he could be admitted into Paradise. Nor 
did Moses, as Dr. Budde among others assumes, have 
to deal with a tribe of fierce and barbarous Bedouins, 
like the Amalekites, to whom indeed the Hebrews 
were antagonistic and with whom they waged in- 
cessant war. 

The Jews, for the most part, differed widely from 
such barbarians. They had become sedentary at the 
time of the exodus, whatever they may have been 
when Abraham migrated from Babylon. They were 
accustomed in Egypt to living in houses, they culti- 
vated and cooked the cereals, and they fed on vege- 
tables and bread. They did not live on flesh and milk 
as do the Bedouins; and, indeed, the chief difficulty 
Moses encountered in the exodus was the ignorance 
of his followers of the habits of desert life, and their 
dislike of desert fare. They were forever pining for 
the delights of civilization. "Would to God we had 
died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, 
when we eat by the flesh-pots, and when we did eat 
bread to the full! for ye have brought us forth into 
this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with 
hunger."^ 

1 Ex. XVI, 3. 



36 PREFACE. 

"We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt 
freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, 
and the onions, and the garlick." These were the 
wants of sedentary and of civilized folk, not of bar- 
barous nomads who are content with goat's flesh and 
milk. And so it was with their morality and their 
conceptions of law. Moses was, indeed, a highly civi- 
lized and highly educated man. No one would prob- 
ably pretend that Moses represented the average Jew 
of the exodus, but Moses understood his audience 
reasonably well, and would not have risked the suc- 
cess of his whole experiment by preaching to them a 
doctrine which was altogether beyond their under- 
standing. If he told them that the favor of God could 
only be gained by obeying the laws he taught, it was 
because he thought such an appeal would be efifective 
with a majority of them. 

Dr. Budde, who is a good example of the modern 
hypercritical school, takes very nearly the opposite 
ground. His theory is that Moses was in search of a 
war god, and that he discovered such a god, in the 
god of the Bedouin tribe of the Kenites whose ac- 
quaintance he first made when dwelling with his 
father-in-law Jethro at Sinai. The morality of such 
a god he insists coincided with the morality which 
Moses may have at times countenanced, but which 
was quite foreign to the spirit of the decalogue. 

Doubtless this is, in a degree, true. The religion of 
the pure Bedouin was very often crude and shocking, 
not to say disgusting. But to argue thus is to ignore 



PREFACE. 37 

the fact that all Bedouins did not, in the age of Moses, 
stand on the same intellectual or moral level, and it 
is also to ignore the gap that separated Moses and his 
congregation intellectually and morally from such 
Bedouins as the Amalekites. 

Dr. Budde, in his Religion of Israel to the Exile, in- 
sists that the Kenite god, Jehovah, demanded "The 
sacred ban by which conquered cities with all their 
living beings were devoted to destruction, the slaughter 
of human beings at sacred spots, animal sacrifices at 
which the entire animal, wholly or half raw, was de- 
voured, without leaving a remnant, between sunset 
and sunrise, — these phenomena and many others of 
the same kind harmonise but ill with an aspiring 
ethical religion." 

He also goes on to say: "We are further referred 
to the legislation of Moses, . . . comprising civil and 
criminal, ceremonial and ecclesiastical, moral and 
social law in varying compass. This legislation, how- 
ever, cannot have come from Moses. . . . Such legis- 
lation can only have arisen after Israel had lived a 
long time in the new home." 

To take these arguments in order, — for they must 
be so dealt with to develop any reasonable theory of 
the Mosaic philosophy, — Moses, doubtless, was a 
ruthless conqueror, as his dealings with Sihon and Og 
sufficiently prove. "So the Lord our God delivered 
into our hands Og also, the king of Bashan, and all 
his people: and we smote him until none was left to 
him remaining. . . . 



38 PREFACE. 

"And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto 
Sihon, king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, 
women, and children of every city." ^ 

There is nothing extraordinary, or essentially bar- 
barous, in this attitude of Moses. The same theory 
of duty or convenience has been held in every age and 
in every land, by men of the ecclesiastical tempera- 
ment, at the very moment at which the extremest 
doctrines of charity, mercy, and love were practised 
by their contemporaries, or even preached by them- 
selves. For example: 

At the beginning of the thirteenth century the two 
great convents of Cluny and Citeau, together, formed 
the heart of monasticism, and Cluny and Citeau were 
two of the richest and most powerful corporations in 
the world, while the south of France had become, by 
reason of the eastern trade, the wealthiest and most 
intelligent district in Europe. It suffices to say here 
that, just about this time, the people of Languedoc 
had made up their minds, because of the failure of 
the Crusades, the cost of such magnificent estab- 
lishments was not justified by their results, and ac- 
cordingly Count Raymond of Toulouse, in sympathy 
with his subjects, did seriously contemplate secular- 
ization. To the abbots of these great convents, it was 
clear that if this movement spread across the Rhone 
into Burgundy, the Church would face losses which 
they could not contemplate with equanimity. At this 
period one Arnold was Abbot of Citeau, universally 
1 Deut. in, 3-6. 



PREFACE. 39 

recognized as perhaps the ablest and certainly one of 
the most unscrupulous men in Europe. Hence the 
crusade against the Albigenses which Simon de Mont- 
fort commanded and Arnold conducted. Arnold's 
first exploit was the sack of the undefended town of 
Beziers, where he slaughtered twenty thousand men, 
women, and children, without distinction of religious 
belief. When asked whether the orthodox might not 
at least be spared, he replied, "Kill them all; God 
knows his omti." 

This sack of Beziers occurred in 1209. Exactly con- 
temporaneously Saint Francis of Assisi was organiz- 
ing his order whose purpose was to realize Christ's 
kingdom upon earth, by the renunciation of worldly 
wealth and by the practice of poverty, humility, and 
obedience. Soon after, Arnold was created Arch- 
bishop of Narbonne and became probably the greatest 
and richest prelate in France, or in the world. This 
was in l^^S. In 1226 the first friars settled in England. 
They multiplied rapidly because of their rigorous dis- 
cipline. Soon there were to be found among them 
some of the most eminent men in England. Their 
chief house stood in London in a spot called Stinking 
Lane, near the Shambles in Newgate, and there, 
amidst poverty, hunger, cold, and filth, these men 
passed their lives in nursing horrible lepers, so loath- 
some that they were rejected by all but themselves, 
while Arnold lived in magnificence in his palace, upon 
the spoil of those whom he had immolated to his greed. 

In the case of Moses the contrast between precept 



40 PREFACE. 

and practice in the race for wealth and fortune was 
not nearly so violent. Moses, it is true, according to 
Leviticus, declared it to be the will of the Lord that 
the Israelites should love their neighbors as them- 
selves,^ while on the other hand in Deuteronomy he 
insisted that obedience was the chief end of life, and 
that if the Israelites were to thoroughly obey the 
Lord's behests, they were to "consume all the people 
which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye 
shall have no pity upon them: neither" should thou 
serve their gods, "for the Lord thy God is a jealous 
God." ^ And the penalty for slackness was "lest 
the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against 
thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth." ^ 
There is, nevertheless, this much to be said in favor 
of the morality of Moses as contrasted with that of 
thirteenth-century orthodox Christians like Arnold; 
Moses led a crusade against a foreign and hostile 
people, while Arnold slaughtered the Albigenses, who 
were his own flock, sheep to whom he was the shep- 
herd, communicants in his own church, and wor- 
shippers of the God whom he served. ^Vhat concerns 
us, however, is that the same stimulant animated 
Moses and Arnold alike. The stimulant, pure and 
simple, of greed. On these points Moses was as out- 
spokenly, one may say as brutally, frank as was 
Arnold. In the desert Moses commanded his followers 
to exterminate the inhabitants of the kingdom of 
Bashan in order that they might appropriate their 
1 Lev. XIX, 18. 2 Deut. vii, 16. 3 Deut. vi, 15. 



PREFACE. 41 

possessions, v»^liich he enumerated, and Moses had no 
other argument to urge but the profitableness of it by 
which to secure obedience to his moral law. 

Arnold stood on precisely the same platform. He 
did not accuse Count Raymond of heresy or any other 
crime, nor did Pope Innocent III consider Raymond 
as morally guilty of a criminal offence, or worthy of 
punishment. Indeed, the pope would have protected 
the Count had it been possible, and summoned him 
before the Fourth Lateran Council for that purpose. 
But Arnold told his audience that were Raymond 
allowed to escape there would be an end of the 
Catholic faith in France. Or, in other words, monas- 
tic property would be secularized. Perhaps he was 
right. At all events, this argument prevailed, and 
Raymond and his family and people were sacrificed. 

Moses promised his congregation that, if they 
would spare nothing they should enjoy abundance of 
good things, without working for them. He was much 
more pitiless than such a man as King David thought 
it necessary to be, but Moses was not a soldier like 
David. He could not promise to win victories himself, 
he could but promise what he had in hand, and that 
was the spoil of those they massacred. Moses never 
had but one appeal to make for obedience, one in- 
centive to offer to obey. In this he was perfectly 
honest and perfectly logical. His congregation and he, 
finding Egypt untenable, were engaged in a common 
land speculation to improve their condition; a specu- 
lation in which Moses believed, but which could only 



42 PREFACE. 

be brought to a successful end by obtaining control of 
the dominant energy of the world. This energy, he 
held, could be handled by no one but himself, and 
then only in case those who acted with him were ab- 
solutely obedient to his commands, which, taken to- 
gether, were equivalent to a magical exorcism or spell. 
Then only could they hope that the Lord of Abraham 
and Isaac would give them "great and goodly cities, 
which thou buildedst not. And houses full of all good 
things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, 
which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, 
which thou plantedst not." ^ 

Very obviously, if the theory which Moses pro- 
pounded were sound the assets which he offered as 
an inducement for docility could be obtained, at so 
cheap a rate, in no other way. All Moses' moral teach- 
ing amounted, therefore, to this — "It pays to be 
obedient and good." No argument could have been 
better adapted to Babylonish society, and it seems to 
have answered nearly as well with the Israelites, which 
proves that they stood on nearly the same intellectual 
plane. The chief difficulty with which Moses had to 
contend was that his countrymen did not thoroughly 
believe in him, nor in the efficacy of his motor. They 
always were tempted to try experiments with other 
motors which were operated by other prophets and 
by other peoples who were, apparently, as prosperous 
as they, or even more so. His trouble was not that his 
followers were nomads unprepared for a sedentary life 
1 Deut. VI, 10, 11. 



PREFACE. 43 

or a moral law like his, or unable to appreciate the 
value of the property of a people further advanced in 
civilization than they were. The Amalekites would 
have responded to no such system of bribery as Moses 
offered the Israelites, who did respond with intelli- 
gence, if not always with enthusiasm. 

The same is true of the Mosaic legislation which Dr. 
Budde curtly dismisses as impossible to have come 
from Moses, ^ as presupposing a knowledge of a settled 
agricultural life, which "Israel did not reach until 
after Moses' death." 

All this is an assumption of fact unsupported by 
evidence; but quite the contrary, as we can see by an 
examination of the law in question. Whatever may 
have been the date of the establishment of the cities 
of refuge, I suppose that it will not be seriously denied 
that the law of the covenant as laid down in Exodus 
XX, 1, Numbers xxxv, 6, is at least as old as the age of 
Moses, in principle, if not in words; and this legal 
principle is quite inconsistent with, if not directly 
antagonistic to, all the prejudices and regulations, 
moral, religious, or civil, of a pure nomadic society, 
since it presupposes a social condition which, if 
adopted, would be fatal to a nomad society. 

The true nomad knows no criminal law save the law 
of the blood feud, which is the law of revenge, and 
which prevailed among the Hebrews much earlier. In 
the early Saxon law it was expressed by the apothegm 
"Factum reputabitur pro volunie." The act implies 
' Religion of Israel to the Exile, 31. 



44 PREFACE. 

the intent. That is to say, the tribe is an enlarged 
family who, since they have no collective system of 
sovereignty which gives them common protection by 
an organized police, and courts with power to enforce 
process, have no option but to protect each other. 
Therefore, it is incumbent on each member of the 
tribe or family to avenge an injury to any other mem- 
ber, whether the injury be accidental or otherwise; 
and to be himself the judge of what amounts to an 
injury. Such a condition prevailed among the He- 
brews at a very early period; "And God blessed Noah 
and his sons, and said unto them: ... at the hand of 
every man's brother will I require the life of man. 
Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood 
be shed." ^ These customs and the type of thought 
which sustain them are very tenacious and change 
slowly. Moses could not have altered the nomadic 
customs of thought and of blood revenge, had he tried, 
more than could Canute. It would have been im- 
possible. The advent of a civilized conception of the 
law is the work of centuries as the history of England 
proves. 

. We know not how long ago it was that the law of 
the blood feud was fully recognized in England, but it 
had already been shaken at the conquest, and its 
death-blow was given it by the Church, which had 
begun to tire of the responsibility entailed by the 
trial by ordeal or miracle, and the obloquy which it 
involved, at a relatively early date. For the purposes 
1 Gen. IX, 1, 5, 6. 



PREFACE. 45 

of the Church and the uses of confession it was more 
convenient to regard crime or tort, as did the Romans; 
as a mental condition, dependent altogether upon the 
state of the mind or "animus." Malice in the eye of 
the Church was the virus which poisoned the other- 
wise innocent act, and made the thought alone pun- 
ishable. Indeed, this conception is one which has not 
yet been completely established even in the modern 
law. The first signs of such a revolution in juris- 
prudence only began to appear in England some seven 
centuries ago. As Mr. Maitland has observed in his 
History of English Law,^ "We receive a shock of sur- 
prise when we meet with a maxim which has troubled 
our modern lawyers, namely, Reum nonfacit nisi mens 
rea, in the middle of the Leges Henrici." That is to 
say somewhere about the year 1118 a.d. This maxim 
was taken bodily out of a sermon of Saint Augustine, 
which accounts for it, but at that time the Church 
had another process to suggest by which she asserted 
her authority. She threw the responsibility for detect- 
ing guilt, in cases of doubt, upon God. By the ordeal, 
if a homicide, for example, were committed, and the 
accused denied his guilt, he was summoned to appear, 
and then, after a solemn reference to God by the 
ecclesiastics in charge, he was caused either to carry 
a red-hot iron bar a certain distance or to plunge his 
arms in boiling water. If he were found, after a certain 
length of time, during which his arms were bandaged, 
to have been injured, he was held to have been guilty. 
1 Vol. II, 476. 



46 PREFACE. 

If he had escaped unhurt he was innocent. Gradually, 
however, the ordeal began to fall into ridicule. William 
Rufus gibed at it, for of fifty men sent to the ordeal of 
iron, under the sacred charge of the clerks, all escaped, 
which certainly, as Mr. Maitland intimates, looks as 
if the oflSciating ecclesiastics had an interest in the 
result.^ At length, by the Lateran Council of 1215, 
the Church put an end to the institution, but long 
afterward it found its upholders. For example, the 
Mirror, written in the reign of Edward I (circa 1285) 
complained, "It is an abuse that proofs and com- 
purgations be not by the miracle of God where other 
proof faileth." Nor was the principle that "attempts" 
to commit indictable offences are crimes, established 
as law, until at least the time of the Star Chamber, 
before its abolition in the seventeenth century. 
Though doubtless it is the law to-day. ^ And this, al- 
though the means used may have been impossible. 
Moreover, the doctrine is still in process of enlarge- 
ment. 

Very convincing conclusions may be drawn from 
these facts. The subject is obscure and diflScult, but 
if the inception of the process of breaking down the 
right of enforcing the blood feud be fixed provisionally 
toward the middle of the tenth century, — and this 
date is early enough, — the movement of thought 
cannot be said to have attained anything like ultimate 
results before at least the year 1321 when a case is 

1 History of English Law, ii, 599, note 2. 

2 Stephen, Digest of the Criminal Law, 192. 



PREFACE. 47 

cited wherein a man was held guilty because he had 
attempted to kill his master, and the "voluntas in isto 
casu reputabitur pro facto" 

Measuring by this standard five hundred years is a 
short enough period to estimate the time necessary 
for a community to pass from the stage when the 
blood feud is recognized as unquestioned law, to the 
status involved in the administration of the cities of 
refuge, for in these cities not only the mental condition 
is provided for as a legitimate defence, but the defence 
of negligence is made admissible in a secular court. 

" These six cities shall be a refuge, both for the chil- 
dren of Israel, and for the stranger, and for the so- 
journer among them; that every one that killeth any 
person unawares may flee thither. . . . 

" If he thrust him of hatred, or hurl at him by laying 
of wait that he die; 

"Or in enmity smite him with his hand, that he die: 
he that smote him shall surely be put to death ; for he 
is a murderer: the revenger of blood shall slay the 
murderer, when he meeteth him. 

" But if he thrust him suddenly without enmity, or 
have cast upon him anything without laying of wait, 

"Or with any stone, wherewith a man may die, see- 
ing him not, and cast it upon him, that he die, and was 
not his enemy, neither sought his harm: 

"Then the congregation shall judge between the 
slayer and the revenger of blood according to these 
judgments : 

"And the congregation shall deliver the slayer out 



48 PREFA CE. 

of the hand of the revenger of blood, and the congre- 
gation shall restore him to the city of his refuge, 
whither he was fled.". . . ^ 

Here we have a defendant in a case of homicide 
setting up the defence that the killing happened 
through an accident, but an accident not caused by 
criminal negligence, and this defence is to be tried by 
the congregation, which is tantamount to trial by jury. 
It is not left to God, under the oversight of the Church; 
and this is precisely our own system at the present 
day. We now come to the inferences to be drawn from 
these facts. Supposing that the Israelites when they 
migrated to Egypt, in the time of Joseph, were in the 
condition of pure nomads among whom the blood feud 
was fully recognized as law, an interval of four or 
five hundred years, such as they are supposed to have 
passed in Goshen would bring them to the exodus. 
Now, assuming that the Israelites during those four 
centuries, when they lived among civilized neighbors 
and under civilized law, made an intellectual move- 
ment corresponding in velocity to the movement the 
English made after the conquest, they would have 
been, about the time when the cities of refuge were 
created, in the position described in Numbers, which 
is what we should expect assuming the Biblical tra- 
dition to be true. 

To us the important question is not whether a cer- 
tain piece of the supposed Mosaic legislation actually 
went into effect during the life of Moses, for that is 
^ Numbers xxxv, 15, 20-S25. 



PREFA CE. 49 

relatively immaterial, but whether the Biblical nar- 
rative is, on the whole, worthy of credence, and this 
correlation of dates gives the strongest possible evi- 
dence in its favor. Very possibly, perhaps it may 
even be said certainly, the order in which events oc- 
curred may have been transposed, but, taken as a 
whole, it is impossible to resist the inference that the 
Bible story is excellent history and that, due allowance 
being made for the prejudice of the various scribes 
who wrote the Pentateuch in favor of the miraculous, 
where Moses was concerned, the Biblical record is 
good and trustworthy history, and frank at that ; — 
much superior to quantities of modern documents 
which we accept without question. 

Of all the achievements of Moses' life none equals 
the exodus itself, either in brilliancy or success. How 
it was possible for Moses, with the assistance he had 
at command, to marshal and move a column of a 
million or a million and a half of men, women, and 
children, without discipline or cohesion, and encum- 
bered with their baggage, beside their cattle, is an 
insoluble mj^stery. "And the children of Israel did 
according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed 
of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, 
and raiment: . . . And they spoiled the Egyptians. 
And the children of Israel journeyed from Ramses to 
Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot that were 
men, beside children. And a mixed multitude went 
up also with them; and flocks and herds, even very 
much cattle." They started from Ramses and Succoth. 



50 PREFACE. 

The position of Ramses has been identified; that of 
Succoth is more questionable. Ramses and Pithom 
were fortified places, built by the Israelites for Ramses 
II, of the Nineteenth Dynasty, but apparently Suc- 
coth was the last halting-place before coming to 
the difficult ground which was overflowed by the 
sea. 

The crossing was made at night, but it is hard to 
understand how, even under the most favorable con- 
ditions of weather, such a vast and confused multi- 
tude of women and children could have made the 
march in darkness with an active enemy pursuing, 
without loss of life or material. Indeed, even at that 
day the movement seemed to the actors so unpar- 
alleled that it always passed for a miracle, and its 
perfect success gave Moses more reputation with the 
Israelites and more practical influence over them than 
anything else he ever did, or indeed than all his other 
works together. "And Israel saw that great work 
which the Lord did upon the Egyptians: and the 
people feared the Lord and believed the Lord and his 
servant Moses." 

"And Miriam, the prophetess, the sister of Aaron; 
and all the women went after her with timbrels and 
with dances." Now Miriam was in general none too 
loyal a follower of her younger brother, but that day, 
or rather night, she did proclaim Moses as a con- 
queror; which was a great concession from her, and 
meant much. And Moses exulted openly, as he had 
good cause to do, and gave vent to his exultation in 



PREFACE. 61 

a song which tradition has ever since attributed to 
him, and has asserted to have been sung by him and 
his congregation as they stood by the shore of the sea 
and watched the corpses of the Egyptians lying in the 
sand. And, if ever man had, Moses then had, cause 
for exultation, for he had seemingly proved by the 
test of war, which is the ultimate test to which a man 
can subject such a theory as his, that he had indeed 
discovered the motor which he sought, and, more im- 
portant still, that he knew how to handle it. There- 
fore, he was master of supreme energy and held his 
right to command by the title of conquest. This was 
the culminating; moment of his life; he never again 
reached such exaltation. From this moment his slow 
and gradual decline began. 

And, indeed, great as had been the momentary suc- 
cess of Moses, his position was one of extreme diflS- 
culty, and probably he so understood it, otherwise 
there would be no way to account for his choosing the 
long, difficult, and perilous journey by Sinai, instead 
of approaching the "Promised Land" directly by 
way of Kadesh-Barnea, which was, in any event, to 
be his ultimate objective. It may well have been 
because Moses felt himself unable alone to cope with 
the difficulties confronting him that he decided at 
any cost to seek Jethro in Midian, who seems to have 
been the only able, honest, and experienced man within 
reach. Joshua, indeed, might be held to be an excep- 
tion to this generalization, but Joshua, though a good 
soldier, was a man of somewhat narrow understanding, 



52 PREFACE. 

and quite unfit to grapple with questions involving 
jurisprudence and financial topography. 

And at this juncture Moses must have felt his own 
deficiencies keenly. As a captain he made no pre- 
tence to efficiency. The Amalekites were, as he well 
knew, at this moment lying in wait for him, and forth- 
with he recognized that he had no alternative but to 
retire into the background himself and surrender the 
active command of the army to Joshua, a fatal con- 
cession had Joshua been ambitious or unscrupulous. 
And this was but the beginning. Before he could 
occupy Palestine he had to encounter and overcome 
numbers of equally formidable foes, a defeat by any 
one of whom might well be fatal. A man like Jethro, 
therefore, would be invaluable in guiding the caravan 
to spots favorable for action, from whence retreat 
to a place of safety would be open in case of a check. 
A reverse which happened on a later occasion gave 
Moses a shock he never forgot. 

Furthermore, though Moses lived many years with 
Jethro, as his chief servant, he never seems to have 
travelled extensively in Arabia, and to have been 
ignorant of the chief trade routes along which wells 
were dug, and of the oases where pasture was to be 
found; so that Moses was nearly worthless as a 
guide, and this was a species of knowledge in which 
Jethro, according to Moses' own statement, excelled. 
Meanwhile, the lives of all his followers depended 
on such knowledge. And Moses, when he reached 
Sinai, left no stone unturned to overcome Jethro 's 



PREFACE. 53 

reluctance to join him and to instruct him on the 
march north. 

More important and pressing than all, Moses was 
ignorant of how, practically, to administer the law 
which he taught. His only idea was to do all in per- 
son, but this, with so large a following, was impossible. 
And here also his hope lay in Jethro. For when 
he got to Sinai, and Jethro remonstrated with him 
upon his methods, pointing out that they were im- 
practicable, all Moses had to say in reply was that he 
sat all day to hear disputes and " I judge between one 
and another; and I do make them know the statutes 
of God, and his laws." Further than this he had 
nothing to propose. It was Jethro who explained to 
him a constructive policy. 

On the whole, upon this analysis, it appears that in 
all those executive departments in which Moses, by 
stress of the responsibilities which he had assumed, 
was called upon, imperatively, to act, there was but 
one, that of the magician or wise man, in which, by 
temperament and training, he was fitted to excel, and 
the functions of this profession drove him into an 
intolerably irksome and distressing position, yet a 
position from which throughout his life he found it 
impossible to escape. No one who attentively weighs 
the evidence can, I apprehend, escape the conviction 
that Moses was at bottom an honest man who would 
have conformed to the moral law he laid dowTi in the 
name of the Lord had it been possible for him to do 
so. Among these precepts none ranked higher than 



54 PREFACE. 

a regard for truth and honesty. "Ye shall not steal, 
neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another." ^ 
And this text is but one example of a general drift of 
thought. 

Whether these particular words of Leviticus, or any 
similar phrases, were ever used by Moses is imma- 
terial. No one can doubt that, in substance, they 
contained the gist of his moral doctrine and that he 
enforced the moral duty which they convey to the 
best of his power. And here the burden lay, which 
crushed this man, from which he never thenceforward 
could, even for an instant, free himself, and which 
Saint Paul avers to be the heaviest burden man can 
bear. Moses, to fulfil what he conceived to be his 
destiny and which at least certainly was his ambition, 
was condemned to lead a life of deceit and to utter 
no word during his long subsequent march which was 
not positively or inferentially a lie. And the bitterest 
of his trials must have been the agony of anxiety in 
which he must have lived lest some error in judgment 
on his part, some slackness in measuring the exact 
credulity of his audience, should cause his exposure 
and lead to his being cast out of the camp as an im- 
postor and hunted to death as a false prophet: a fate 
which more than once nearly overtook him. Indeed, 
as he aged and his nerves lost their elasticity under the 
tension, he became obsessed with the fixed idea that 
God had renounced him and that some horror would 
overtake him should he attempt to cross the Jordan 
^ Leviticus xix, 11. 



PREFACE. 65 

and enter the "Promised Land." Defeated at Hor- 
mah, he dared not face another such check and, 
therefore, dawdled away his time in the wilderness 
until further dawdling became impossible. Then fol- 
lowed his mental collapse which is told in Deuter- 
onomy, together with his suicide on Mount Nebo. 
And thus he died because he could not gratify at once 
his lust for power and his instinct to live an honest 
man. 



CHAPTER II. 

The interval during which Moses led the exodus 
falls, naturally, into three parts of unequal length. 
The first consists of the months which elapsed be- 
tween the departure from Ramses and the arrival at 
Sinai. The second comprises the halt at Sinai, while 
the third contains the story of the rest of his life, end- 
ing with Mount Nebo. 

His trials began forthwith. The march was hardly 
a week old before the column was in quasi-revolt be- 
cause he had known so little of the country, that he 
had led the caravan three days through a waterless 
wilderness where they feared to perish from thirst. 
And matters grew steadily worse. At Rephidim, 
"And the people murmured against Moses, and said, 
Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of 
Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with 
thirst?" Not impossibly Moses may still, at this 
stage of his experiences, have believed in himself, in 
the God he pretended to serve, and in his mission. At 
least he made a feint of so doing. Indeed, he had to. 
Not to have done so would have caused his instant 
downfall. He always had to do so, in every emer- 
gency of his life. A few days later he was at his wits' 
end. He cried unto the Lord, "What shall I do unto 
this people? They be almost ready to stone me." In 
short, long before the congregation reached Sinai, and 



PREFACE. bl 

indeed before Moses had fought his first battle with 
Amaiek, the people had come to disbelieve in Moses 
and also to question whether there was such a god as 
he pretended. 

"And he called the name of the place Massah, and 
Meribah, because of the chiding of the children of 
Israel, and because they tempted the Lord, saying, Is 
the Lord among us, or not?" 

"Then came Amaiek, and fought with Israel in 
Rephidim." ^ 

Under such conditions it was vital to Moses to show 
resolution and courage; but it was here that Moses, 
on the contrary, flinched; as he usually did flinch when 
it came to war, for Moses was no soldier. 

"And Moses said unto Joshua, Choose us out men 
and go out, fight with Amaiek : to-morrow I will stand 
on the top of the hill with the rod of God in mine 
hand." 

And Moses actually had the assurance to do as he 
proposed, nor did he even have the endurance to 
stand. He made Aaron and Hur fetch a stone on 
which he should sit and then hold up his hands for 
him, pretending the while that when Moses held up 
his hands the Hebrews prevailed and when he lowered 
them Amaiek prevailed. Notwithstanding, Joshua 
won a victory. But it may readily be believed that 
this performance of his functions as a captain, did little 
to strengthen the credit of Moses among the fighting 
men. Nor evidently was Moses satisfied with the 
* Exodus XVII, 7, 8. 



58 PREFACE. 

figure that he cut, nor was he confident that Joshua 
approved of him, for the Lord directed Moses to make 
excuses, promising to do better the next time, by as- 
suring Joshua that "I will utterly put out the remem- 
brance of Amalek from under heaven." This was the 
best apology Moses could make for his weakness. 
However, the time had now come when Moses was 
to realize his plan of meeting Jethro. 

"And Jethro . . . came with his sons and his wife 
unto Moses into the wilderness, where he encamped 
at the mount of God: . . . And Moses went out to 
meet his father-in-law, and did obeisance, and kissed 
him; and they asked each other of their welfare; and 
they came into the tent. 

"And Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord 
had done unto Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for 
Israel's sake, and all the travail that had come upon 
them by the way, and how the Lord had delivered 
them. . . . 

"And Jethro said. Blessed be the Lord, who hath 
delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians. . . . 
Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods. 
. . . And Aaron came, and all the elders of Israel, to 
eat bread with Moses' father-in-law before God." 

It is from all this very plain that Jethro had a 
controlling influence over Moses, and was the prox- 
imate cause of much that followed. For the next 
morning Moses, as was his custom, "sat to judge the 
people : and the people stood by Moses from the morn- 
ing unto the evening." And when Jethro saw how 



PREFACE. 69 

Moses proceeded he remonstrated, " Why sittest thou 
thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee from 
morning unto even?" 

And Moses replied : " Because the people come unto 
me to enquire of God." 

And Jethro protested, saying " The thing thou doest 
is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou 
and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too 
heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself 
alone. 

"Hearken, ... I will give thee counsel, and God 
shall be with thee; Be thou for the people to God- 
ward, that thou mayest bring the causes unto God." 

Then it was that Moses perceived that he must 
have a divinely promulgated code. Accordingly, 
Moses made his preparations for a great dramatic 
effect, and it is hard to see how he could have made 
them better. For, whatever failings he may have had 
in his other capacities as a leader, he understood his 
part as a magician. 

He told the people to be ready on the third day, for 
on the third day the Lord would come down in the 
sight of all upon Mount Sinai. But, "Take heed to 
yourselves that ye go not up into the mount, or touch 
the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall 
be surely put to death: 

"There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall 
surely be stoned or shot through; whether it be beast 
or man, it shall not live: when the trumpet soundeth 
long, they shall come up to the mount." 



60 PREFACE. 

It must be admitted that Moses either had won- 
derful luck, or that he had wonderful judgment in 
weather, for, as it happened in the passage of the Red 
Sea, so it happened here. At the Red Sea he was 
aided by a gale of wind which coincided with a low 
tide and made the passage practicable, and at Sinai 
he had a thunder-storm. 

"And it came to pass on the third day, in the morn- 
ing, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a 
thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the 
trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that 
was in the camp trembled." Moses had undoubtedly 
sent some thoroughly trustworthy person, probably 
Joshua, up the mountain to blow a ram's horn and to 
light a bonfire, and the effect seems to have been 
excellent. 

"And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, be- 
cause the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the 
smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, 
and the whole mount quaked greatly. 

"And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, 
and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God 
answered him by a voice. 

"And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, on 
the top of the mount; and the Lord called Moses up 
to the top of the mount; and Moses went up." And 
the first thing that Moses did on behalf of the Lord 
was to "charge the people, lest they break through 
unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish." 

And Moses replied to God's enquiry, "The people 



PREFACE. 61 

cannot come up to Mount Sinai: for thou chargedst 
us, saying, Set bounds about the mount. 

"And the Lord said imto him, Away, get thee down, 
and thou shalt come up, thou, and Aaron with thee: 
but let not the priests and the people break through 
to come up unto the Lord, lest he break forth upon 
them. 

"So Moses went down unto the people, and spake 
unto them." 

Whether the decalogue, as we know it, was a code 
of law actually delivered upon Sinai, which German 
critics very much dispute as being inconsistent with 
the stage of civilization at which the Israelites had 
arrived, but which is altogether kindred to the Baby- 
lonish law with which Moses was familiar, is imma- 
terial for the present purpose. What is essential is 
that beside the decalogue itself there is a considerable 
body of law chiefly concerned with the position of 
servants or slaves, the difference between assaults or 
torts committed with or without malice, theft, tres- 
pass, and the regulation of the lex talionis. There are 
beside a variety of other matters touched upon all of 
which may be found in the 21st, 22d, and 23d chap- 
ters of Exodus. 

Up to this point in his show Moses had behaved 
with discretion and had obtained a complete success. 
The next day he went on to demand an acceptance of 
his code, which he prepared to submit in form. But 
as a preliminary he made ready to take Aaron and his 
two sons, together with seventy elders of the congre- 



\ -^ 



62 PREFACE. 

gation up the mountain, to be especially impressed 
with a sacrifice and a feast which he had it in his mind 
to organize. In the first place, "Moses . . . rose up 
early in the morning, and builded an altar, . . , and 
sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord. . . . 

"And he took the book of the covenant, and read 
in the audience of the people: and they said, All that 
the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient." 

Had Moses been content to end his ceremony here 
and to return to the camp with his book of the cov- 
enant duly accepted as law, all might have been well. 
But success seems to have intoxicated him, and he 
conceived an undue contempt for the intelligence of 
his audience, being, apparently, convinced that there 
were no limits to their credulity, and that he could do 
with them as he pleased. 

It was not enough for him that he should have them 
accept an ordinary book admittedly written by him- 
self. There was nothing overpoweringly impressive 
in that. What he wanted was a stone tablet on 
which his code should be engraved, as was the famous 
code of Hammurabi, which he probably knew well, 
and this engraving must putatively be done by God 
himself, to give it the proper solemnity. 

To have such a code as this engraved either by him- 
self or by any workman he could take into the moun- 
tain with him, would be a work of time and would 
entail his absence from the camp, and this was a very 
serious risk. But he was over-confident and deter- 
mined to run it, rather than be baulked of his purpose. 



PREFACE. 63 

"And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua; and 
Moses went up into the mount of God. 

"And he said unto the elders, Tarry you here for us, 
until we come again unto you: and, behold, Aaron 
and Hur are with you: and if any man have matters 
to do, let him come unto them. And Moses went 
into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the 
mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and 
forty nights." 

But Moses had made the capital mistake of under- 
valuing the intelligence of his audience. They had, 
doubtless, been impressed when Moses, as a showman, 
had presented his spectacle, for Moses had a com- 
manding presence and he had chosen a wonderful lo- 
cality for his performance. But once he was gone 
the effect of what he had done evaporated and they 
began to value the exhibition for what it really was. 
As men of common sense, said they to one another, 
why should w^e linger here, if Moses has played this 
trick upon us? Why not go back to Egypt, where at 
least we can get something to eat? So they decided 
to bribe Aaron, who was venal and would do anything 
for money. 

"And when the people saw that Moses delayed to 
come down out of the mount, the people gathered 
themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, 
Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for 
this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the 
land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him." 

When Aaron heard this proposition he showed no 



64 PREFACE. 

objection to accept, provided the people made it 
worth his while to risk the wrath of Moses; so he 
answered forthwith, "Break off the golden earrings, 
which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and 
of your daughters, and bring them unto me." 

These were the ornaments of which the departing 
Israelites had spoiled the Egyptians and they must 
have been of very considerable value. At all events, 
Aaron took them and melted them and made them 
into the image of a calf, such as he had been used to 
see in Egypt. The calf was probably made of wood 
and laminated with gold. Sir G. Wilkinson thinks 
that the calf was made to represent Mnevis, with 
whose worship the Israelites had been familiar in 
Egypt. Then Aaron proclaimed a feast for the next 
day in honor of this calf and said, "To-morrow is a 
feast to the Lord," and they said, "These be thy gods, 
O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of 
Egypt." 

"And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered 
burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings: and the 
people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to 
play." 

It was not very long before Moses became suspicious 
that all was not right in the camp, and he prepared to 
go down, taking the two tables of testimony in his 
hands. These stone tablets were covered with writing 
on both sides, which must have taken a long time to en- 
grave considering that Moses was on a bare mountain- 
side with probably nobody to help but Joshua. Of 



PREFACE. 65 

course all that made this weary expedition worth the 
doing was that, as the Bible says, "the tables were" 
to pass for "the work of God, and the writing was the 
writing of God." Accordingly, it is not surprising that 
as Moses "came nigh unto the camp," and he "saw the 
calf, and the dancing": that his " anger waxed hot, and 
he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them 
beneath the mount. 

"And he took the calf which they had made, and 
burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and 
strewed it upon the water, and made the children of 
Israel drink of it. 

"And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people 
unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin upon 
them? 

"And Aaron said. Let not the anger of my lord wax 
hot : thou knowest the people, that they are set on mis- 
chief. 

"For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall 
go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that 
brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not 
what is become of him. 

"And I said unto them. Whosoever hath any gold, 
let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast 
it into the fire, and there came out this calf. 

"And when Moses saw that the people were naked; 
(for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame 
among their enemies:) " that is to say, the people had 
come to the feast unarmed, and without the slightest 
fear or suspicion of a possible attack; then Moses saw 



66 PREFACE. 

his opportunity and placed himself in a gate of the 
camp, and said: "Who is on the Lord's side? Let him 
come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered them- 
selves together unto him. 

"And he said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of 
Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in 
and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and 
slay every man his brother, and every man his com- 
panion, and every man his neighbour. 

"And the children of Levi did according to the word 
of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about 
three thousand men." 

There are few acts in all recorded history, including 
the awful massacres of the Albigenses by Simon de 
Montfort and the Abbot Arnold, more indefensible 
than this wholesale murder by Moses of several thou- 
sand people who had trusted him, and whom he had 
entrusted to the care of his own brother, who partici- 
pated in their crime, supposing that they had com- 
mitted any crime saving the crime of tiring of his 
dictatorship. 

The effect of this massacre was to put Moses, for the 
rest of his life, in the hands of the Levites with Aaron at 
their head, for only by having a body of men stained 
with his own crimes and devoted to his fortunes could 
Moses thenceforward hope to carry his adventure to a 
good end. Otherwise he faced certain and ignominious 
failure. His preliminary task, therefore, was to devise 
for the Levites a reward which would content them. 
His first step in this direction was to go back to the 



PREFACE. 67 

mountain and seek a new inspiration and a revelation 
more suited to the existing conditions than the revela- 
tion conveyed before the golden calf incident. 

Up to this time there is nothing in Jewish history to 
show that the priesthood was developing into a priv- 
ileged and hereditary caste. With the consecration 
of Aaron as high priest the process began. Moses spent 
another six weeks in seclusion on the mount. And as 
soon as he returned to the camp he proclaimed how the 
people should build and furnish a sanctuary in which 
the priesthood should perform its functions. These 
directions were very elaborate and detailed, and part 
of the furnishings of the sanctuary consisted in the 
splendid and costly garments for Aaron and his sons 
"for glory and for beauty." 

"And thou shalt put upon Aaron the holy garments, 
and anoint him, and sanctify him; that he may minis- 
ter unto me in the priest's office. And thou shalt bring 
his sons, and clothe them with coats : And thou shalt 
anoint them, as thou didst anoint their father, that they 
may minister unto me in the priest's office: for their 
anointing shall surely be an everlasting priesthood, 
throughout their generations. 

"Thus did Moses: according to all that the Lord 
commanded him, so did he." 

It followed automatically that, with the creation of 
a great vested interest centred in an hereditary caste 
of priests, the pecuniary burden on the people was cor- 
respondingly increased and that thenceforward Moses 
became nothing but the representative of that vested 



68 PREFACE. 

interest: as reactionary and selfish as all such repre- 
sentatives must be. How selfish and how reactionary 
may readily be estimated by glancing at Numbers 
XVIII, where God's directions are given to Aaron touch- 
ing what he was to claim for himself, and what the 
Levites were to take as their wages for service. It was 
indeed liberal compensation. A good deal more than 
much of the congregation thought such services worth. 

In the first place, Aaron and the Levites with him 
for their service "of the tabernacle" were to have "all 
the tenth in Israel for an inheritance." But this was 
a small part of their compensation. There were be- 
side perquisites, especially those connected with the 
sacrifices which the people were constrained to make 
on the most trifling occasions; as, for example, when- 
ever they became unclean, through some accident, as 
by touching a dead body: 

"This shall be thine of the most holy things, reserved 
from the fire: every oblation of their's, every meat 
offering of their's, and every sin offering of their's, and 
every trespass offering of their's, which they shall ren- 
der unto me, shall be most holy for thee and thy sons. 

" In the most holy place shalt thou eat it; every male 
shall eat it; it shall be holy unto thee. 

"And this is thine. ... All the best of the oil, and all 
the best of the wine, and of the wheat, the firstfruits of 
them which they shall offer unto the Lord, them have 
I given thee; . . . every one that is clean in thine house 
shall eat of it. 

"Everything devoted in Israel shall be thine. . . . 



PREFACE. 69 

"All the heave offerings of the holy things, which 
the children of Israel offer unto the Lord, have I given 
thee, and thy sons and thy daughters with thee, by a 
statute forever: it is a covenant of salt forever before 
the Lord unto thee and to thy seed with thee." 

Also, on the taking of a census, such as occurred at 
Sinai, Aaron received a most formidable perquisite. 

The Levites were not to be numbered; but there was 
to be a complicated system of redemption at the rate 
of "five shekels by the poll, after the shekel of the 
sanctuary." 

"And Moses took the redemption money of them 
that were over and above them that were redeemed by 
the Levites: Of the first-born of the children of Israel 
took he the money; a thousand three hundred and 
three score and five shekels, after the shekel of the 
sanctuary; And Moses gave the money of them that 
were redeemed unto Aaron and to his sons." 

Assuming the shekel of those days to have weighed 
two hundred and twenty-four grains of silver, its value 
in our currency would have been about fifty -five cents, 
but its purchasing power, twelve hundred years before 
Christ, would have been, at the very most moderate 
estimate, at least ten for one, which would have 
amoimted to between six and seven thousand dollars in 
hard cash for no service whatever, which, considering 
that the Israelites were a wandering nomadic horde in 
the wilderness, was, it must be admitted, a pretty heavy 
charge for the pleasure of observing the performances 
of Aaron and his sons, in their gorgeous garments. 



70 PREFACE. 

Also, under any sedentary administration it followed 
that the high priest must become the most consider- 
able personage in the community, as well as one of the 
richest. And thus as payment for the loyalty to himself 
of the Levites during the massacre of the golden calf, 
Moses created a theocratic aristocracy headed by Aaron 
and his sons, and comprising the whole tribe of Levi, 
whose advancement in fortune could not fail to create 
discontent. It did so: a discontent which culminated 
very shortly after in the rebellion of Korah, which 
brought on a condition of things at Kadesh which con- 
tributed to make the position of Moses intolerable. 

Moses was one of those administrators \\ho were 
particularly reprobated by Saint Paul; Men who "do 
evil," as in the slaughter of the feasters who set up the 
golden calf, "that good may come," and "whose dam- 
nation," therefore, "is just." ^ 

And Moses wrought thus through ambition, because, 
though personally disinterested, he could not endure 
having his will thwarted. Aaron had nearly the con- 
verse of such a temperament. Aaron appears to have 
had few or no convictions; it mattered little to him 
whether he worshipped Jehovah on Sinai or the golden 
calf at the foot of Sinai, provided he were paid at his 
own price. And he took care to exact a liberal price. 
Also the inference to be drawn from the way in which 
Moses behaved to him is that Moses understood 
what manner of man he was. 

Jethro stood higher in the estimation of Moses, and 
* Romans in, 8. 



PREFACE. 71 

Moses did his best to keep Jethro with him, but, appar- 
ently, Jethro had watched Moses closely and was not 
satisfied with his conduct of the exodus. On the eve of 
departure from Sinai, just as the Israelites were break- 
ing camp, Moses sought out Jethro and said to him; 
"We are journeying unto the place of which the Lord 
said, I will give it you; come thou with us, and we will 
do thee good; for the Lord has spoken good concerning 
Israel. 

"And he said unto him, I will not go; but I will de- 
part to mine own land, and to my kindred." 

Not discouraged, Moses kept on urging: "Leave us 
not, I pray thee; forasmuch as thou knowest how we 
are to encamp in the wilderness, and thou mayest be 
to us instead of eyes. 

"And it shall be, if thou go with us, yea, it shall be, 
that what goodness the Lord shall do unto us, the same 
will we do unto thee." It has been inferred from a 
passage in Judges,^ that Moses induced Jethro to re- 
consider his refusal and that he did accompany the con- 
gregation in its march to Kadesh, but, on the whole, 
the text of the Bible fails to bear out such in- 
ference, for there is no subsequent mention of Jethro 
in the books which treat directly of the trials of the 
journey, although there would seem to have been 
abundant occasion for Moses to have called upon 
Jethro for aid had Jethro been present. In his appar- 
ent absence the march began, under the leadership 
of the Lord and Moses, very much missing Jethro. 
^ Judges I, 16. 



72 PREFACE. 

They departed from the mount: "And the cloud of 
the Lord was upon them by day," when they left the 
camp "to search out a resting-place." Certainly, on 
this occasion, the Lord selected a poor spot for the pur- 
pose, quite different from such an one as Jethro 
would have been expected to have pointed out; for the 
children of Israel began complaining mightily, so much 
so that it displeased the Lord who sent fire into the ut- 
termost parts of the camp, where it consumed them. 

"And the people cried unto'^Moses, and when Moses 
prayed unto the Lord, the fire was quenched." 

This suggestion of a divine fire under the control of 
Moses opens an interesting speculation. 

The Magi, who were the priests of the Median reli- 
gion, greatly developed the practices of incantation 
and sorcery. Among these rites they "pretended to 
have the power of making fire descend on to their al- 
tars by means of magical ceremonies." ^ Moses ap- 
pears to have been very fond of this particular miracle. 
It is mentioned as having been effective here at Ta- 
berah, and it was the supposed weapon employed to 
suppress Korah's rebellion. Moses was indeed a pow- 
erful enchanter. His relations with all the priestcraft 
of central Asia were intimate, and if the Magi had 
secrets which were likely to be of use to him in main- 
taining his position among the Jews, the inference is 
that he would certainly have used them to the utmost; 
as he did the brazen serpent, the ram's horns at Sinai, 
and the like. But in spite of all his miracles Moses 
' Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, 226, 238. 



PREFACE. 73 

found his task too heavy, and he frankly confessed 
that he wished himself dead. 

"Then Moses heard the people weep throughout 
their families . . . and the anger of the Lord was 
kindled greatly; Moses also was displeased. 

"And Moses said unto the Lord, Wherefore hast 
thou afflicted thy servant? . . . that thou layest the 
burden of all this people upon me.'* 

"Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten 
them, that thou shouldest say unto me. Carry them 
in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking 
child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their 
fathers? 

"Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this 
people? for they weep unto me saying. Give us flesh 
that we may eat. 

"I am not able to bear all this people alone, because 
it is too heavy for me. 

"And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, 
out of hand, if I have found favour in thy sight; and 
let me not see my wretchedness." 

Leaving aside for the moment all our childish pre- 
ventions, and considering this evidence in the cold 
light of history, it becomes tolerably evident that 
Moses had now reached the turning-point in his career, 
the point whither he had inexorably tended since the 
day on which he bid good-bye to Jethro to visit Egypt 
and attempt to gain control of the exodus, and the 
point to which all optimists must come who resolve to 
base a religious or a political movement on the manip- 



74 PREFACE. 

ulation of the supernatural. However pure and dis- 
interested the motives of such persons may be at the 
outset, and however thoroughly they may believe in 
themselves and in their mission, sooner or later, to 
compass their purpose, they must resort to deception 
and thus become impostors who flourish on the cre- 
dulity of their dupes. 

Moses, from the nature of the case, had to make such 
demands on the credulity of his followers that even 
those who were bound to him by the strongest ties of 
affection and self-interest were alienated, and those 
without such commanding motives to submit to his 
claim to exact from them absolute obedience, revolted, 
and demanded that he should be deposed. The first 
serious trouble with which Moses had to contend 
came to a head at Hazeroth, the second station after 
leaving Sinai. The supposed spot is still used as a 
watering-place. There Miriam and Aaron attacked 
Moses because they were jealous of his wife, whom 
they decried as an "Ethiopian." And they said, 
"Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? hath 
he not spoken also by us,'*" Instantly, it became evi- 
dent to Moses that if this denial of his superior inti- 
macy with God were to be permitted, his supremacy 
must end. Accordingly the Lord came down "in the 
pillar of the cloud, and stood in the door of the taber- 
nacle, and called Aaron and Miriam: and they both 
came forth." And the Lord explained that he had no 
objection to a prophet; if any one among the congre- 
gation had an ambition to be a prophet he would com- 



PREFACE. 75 

municate with him in a dream ; but there must alwaj-s 
be a wide difference between such a man or woman and 
Moses with w^hom he would "speak mouth to mouth, 
even apparently, and not in dark speeches." And 
then God demanded irritably, "^Vherefore, then, were 
ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?" 
" Afterward the cloud," according to the Bible, de- 
parted and God with it. 

Ever since the dawn of time the infliction of or 
tlie cure of disease has been the stronghold of the 
necromancer, the wise man, the magician, the saint, 
the prophet and the priest, and Moses was no excep- 
tion to the rule, only hitherto he had had no occasion 
to display his powers of this kind. Nevertheless, among 
the Hebrews of the exodus, the field for this form 
of miracle was large. Leprosy was very prevalent, so 
much so that in Egy]:)t the Jews were called a nation 
of lepers. And in the camp the regulations touching 
them were strict and numerous. But the Jews were 
always a dirty race. 

In chapter xiii of Leviticus, elaborate directions are 
given as to how the patient shall be brought before 
Aaron himself, or at least some other of the priests, 
who was to examine the sore and, if it proved to be a 
probable case of leprosy, the patient was to be excluded 
from the camp for a week. At the end of that time 
the disease, if malignant, was supposed to show signs 
of spreading, in which case there was no cure and the 
patient was condemned to civil death. On the con- 
trary, if no virulent symptoms developed during 



76 rREFACE. 

the week, the patient was pronounced clean and re- 
turned to ordinary life. 

The miracle in the case of Miriam was this: When 
the cloud departed from off the tabernacle, IVIiriam was 
found to be "leprous, white as snow," just as Moses' 
hand was found to be white with leprosy after his con- 
versation with the Lord at the burning bush. Upon 
this Aaron, who had been as guilty as Miriam, and 
was proportionately nervous, made a prayer to Moses : 
"Alas, my lord, I beseech thee, lay not the sin upon 
us, wherein we have done foolishly. . . . Let her not be 
as one dead. 

"And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, Heal her 
now, O God, I beseech thee." 

But the Lord replied: "If her father had but spit in 
her face, should she not be ashamed seven days? Let 
her be shut out from the camp seven days, and after 
that let her be received in again." 

This was the Mosaic system of discipline. And it 
was serious for all parties concerned. Evidently it 
was very serious for Miriam, who had to leave her tent 
and be exiled to some spot in the desert, where she had 
to shift for herself. We all know the almost intoler- 
able situation of those unfortunates who, in the East, 
are excluded from social intercourse, and sit without 
the gate, and are permitted to approach no one. But 
it was also a serious infliction for the congregation, 
since Miriam was a personage of consequence, and had 
to be waited for. That is to say, a million or two of 
people had to delay their pilgrimage until Moses 



PREFACE. 77 

had determined how much punishment Miriam de- 
served for her insubordination, and this was a question 
which lay altogether within the discretion of Moses. 
In that age there were at least seven varieties of erup- 
tions which could hardly, if at all, be distinguished, in 
their early stages, from leprosy, and it was left to 
INIoses to say whether or not Miriam had been attacked 
by true leprosy or not. There was no one, apparently, 
to question his judgment, for, since Jethro had left 
the camp, there was no one to controvert the Mosaic 
opinion on matters such as these. Doubtless Moses 
was content to give Aaron and Miriam a fright; but 
also Moses intended to make them understand that 
they lay absolutely at his mercy. 

After this outbreak of discontent had been thus sum- 
marily suppressed and Miriam had been again received 
as "clean," the caravan resumed its march and entered 
into the wilderness of Paran, which adjoined Palestine, 
and from whence an invasion of Canaan, if one were 
to be attempted, would be organized. Accordingly 
Moses appointed a reconnaissance, who in the lan- 
guage of the Bible are called "spies," to examine the 
country, report its condition, and decide whether an 
attack were feasible. 

On this occasion Moses seems to have remembered 
the lesson he learned at Sinai. He did not undertake 
to leave the camp himself for a long interval. He sent 
the men whom he supposed he could best trust, among 
whom were Joshua and Caleb. These men, who cor- 
responded to what, in a modern army, would be called 



78 PREFACE. 

the general-staff, were not sent to manufacture a re- 
port which they might have reason to suppose woulcj be 
pleasing to Moses, but to state precisely what they 
saw and heard together with their conclusions thereon, 
that they might aid their commander in an arduous 
campaign; and this duty they seem, honestly enough, 
to have performed. But this was very far from satis- 
fying Moses, who wanted to make a strenuous offen- 
sive, and yet sought some one else to take the respon- 
sibility therefor. 

The spies were absent six weeks and when they re- 
turned were divided in opinion. They all agreed that 
Canaan was a good land, and, in verity, flowing with 
milk and honey. But the people, most of them thought, 
were too strong to be successfully attacked. "The 
cities were walled and very great," and moreover "we 
saw the children of Anak there." 

"The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south; and 
the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites, 
dwell in the mountains; and the Canaanites dwell by 
the sea, and by the coast of Jordan. 

"And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and 
said, Let us go up at once, ... for we are well able to 
overcome it. 

"But the men that went up with him said. We be 
not able to go up against the people; for they are 
stronger than we. 

"And they brought up an evil report of the land 
which they had searched, . . . saying, ... all the people 
that we saw in it are men of great stature. 



PREFACE. 79 

"And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, . . . 
and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so 
were we in their sight," 

Had Moses been gifted with mihtary talent, or with 
any of the higher instincts of the soldier, he would have 
arranged to have received this report in private and 
would then have acted as he thought best. Above 
all he would have avoided anything like a council of 
war by the whole congregation, for a vast popular 
meeting of that kind was certain to become unman- 
ageable the moment a division appeared in their com- 
mand, upon a difficult question of pohcy. 

Moses did just the opposite. He convened the 
people to hear the report of the "spies." And im- 
mediately the majority became dangerously depressed, 
not to say mutinous. 

"And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and 
cried; and the people wept that night. 

"And all the children of Israel miu-mured against 
Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congrega- 
tion said unto them. Would God that we had died in 
the land of Egypt! Or would God we had died in this 
wilderness! . . . 

"And they said one to another. Let us make a cap- 
tain, and let us return into Egypt. 

"Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before 
all the assembly of the congregation of the children of 
Israel." 

But Joshua, who was a soldier, when Moses thus 
somewhat ignominiously collapsed, retained his pres- 



80 PREFACE. 

ence of mind and his energy. He and Caleb "rent 
their clothes," and reiterated their advice. 

"And they spake unto all the company of the chil- 
dren of Israel, saying. The land which we passed 
through to search it, is an exceeding good land. 

"If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into 
this land, and give it us; a land which flowetli with 
milk and honey. 

"Only rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear 
ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: 
tlieir defence is departed from them . . . fear them not. 

"But all the congregation bade stone them with 
stones." 

By this time Moses seems to have recovered some 
composure. Enough, at least, to repeat certain violent 
threats of the "Lord." 

Nothing is so impressive in all this history as the dif- 
ference between Moses when called upon to take 
responsibility as a military commander, and Moses 
when, not to mince matters, he acted as a quack. On 
the one hand, he was all vacillation, timidity, and ir- 
ritability. On the other, all temerity and effrontery. 

In this particular emergency, which touched his 
very life, Moses vented his disappointment and vexa- 
tion in a number of interviews which he pretended to 
have had with the "Lord," and which he retailed to the 
congregation, just at the moment when they needed, 
as Joshua perceived, to be steadied and encouraged. 

"How long," vociferated the Lord, when Moses had 
got back his power of speech, "will this people provoke 



PREFACE. 81 

me? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all 
the signs which I have shewed among them? 

"I will smite them with the pestilence, and disin- 
herit them, and will make of thee a greater nation and 
mightier than they." 

But when Moses had cooled a little and came to re- 
flect upon what he had made the "Lord" say, he fell 
into his ordinary condition of hesitancy. Supposing 
some great disaster should happen to the Jews at Ka- 
desh, which lay not so very far from the Egj^^tian bor- 
der, the Egyptians would certainly hear of it, and in 
that case the Eg-j^jtian army might pursue and capture 
Moses. Such a contingency was not to be contem- 
plated, and accordingly Moses began to make reserva- 
tions. It must be remembered that all these osten- 
sible conversations with the "Lord" went on in public; 
that is to say, Moses proffered his advice to the Lord 
aloud, and then retailed his version of the answer he 
received. 

"Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, 
then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will 
speak, saying, 

"Because the Lord was not able to bring this people 
into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he 
hath slain them in the wilderness. . . . 

" Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people 
according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou 
hast forgiven this people from Egj^^t even until now. 

"And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to 
thy word." 



82 PREFACE. 

Had Moses left the matter there it would not have 
been so bad, but he could not contain his vexation, be- 
cause his staff had not divined his wishes. Those men, 
though they had done their strict duty only, must be 
punished, so he thought, to maintain his ascendancy. 

Of the twelve "spies" whom Moses had sent into 
Canaan to report to him, ten had incurred his bitter 
animosity because they failed to render him such a re- 
port as would sustain him before the people in making 
the campaign of invasion to which he felt himself 
pledged, and on the success of which his reputation 
depended. Of these ten men, Moses, to judge by the 
character of his demands upon the Lord, thought it in- 
cumbent on him to make an example, in order to sus- 
tain his own credit. 

To simply exclude these ten spies from Palestine, as 
he proposed to do with the rest of the congregation, 
would hardly be enough, for the rest of the Hebrews 
were, at most, passive, but these ten had wilfully ig- 
nored the will of Moses, or, as he expressed it, of the 
Lord. Therefore it was the Lord's duty, as Moses saw 
it, to punish them. And this Moses proposed that 
the Lord should do in a prompt and awful manner: 
the lesson being pointed by the immunity of Joshua 
and Caleb, the two spies who had had the wit to divine 
the will of Moses. Therefore, all ten of these men died 
of the plague while the congregation lay encamped at 
Kadesh, though Joshua and Caleb remained immune. 

Moses, as the commanding general of an attacking 
army, took a course diametrically opposed to that 



PREFACE. 83 

of Joshua, and calculated to be fatal to victory^. He 
vented his irritation in a series of diatribes which he 
attributed to the "Lord," and which discouraged and 
confused his men at the moment when their morale was 
essential to success. 

Therefore, the Lord, according to Moses, went on: 

"But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled 
with the glory of the Lord. 

"Because all those men which have seen my glory, 
and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wil- 
derness, have tempted me now these ten times, and 
have not hearkened to my voice; 

"Surely they shall not see the land which I swear 
imto their fathers, neither shall any of them that pro- 
voked me see it: 

"But my servant Caleb, because he had another 
spirit with him, and hath followed me fully, him will 
I bring into the land whereinto he went; ..." 

Having said all this, and, as far as might be, disor- 
ganized the army, Moses surrendered suddenly his 
point. He made the " Lord " go on to command : " To- 
morrow turn you, and get you into the wilderness by 
the way of the Red Sea." But, not even yet content, 
Moses assured them that this retreat should profit 
them nothing. 

"And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, 
saying. How long shall I bear with this evil congrega- 
tion, which murmur against me? I have heard the 
murmurings of the children of Israel, which they mur- 
mur against me." And the Lord continued: 



84 PREFA CE. 

"Say unto them, As truly as I live, ... as ye have 
spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you. 

"Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all 
that were numbered of you, . . . from twenty years old 
and upward, which have murmured against me, 

"Doubtless ye shall not come into the land. . . . 

"But as for you, your carcases, they shall fall in this 
wilderness. ... 

"And the men which Moses sent to search the land, 
who returned, and made all the congregation to mur- 
mur against him, by bringing up a slander upon the 
land, — 

"Even those men that did bring up the evil report 
upon the land, died by the plague before the Lord. 

"But Joshua . . . and Caleb, . . . which were of the 
men that went to search the land, lived still. 

"And Moses told these sayings unto all the children 
of Israel and the people mourned greatly." 

The congregation were now completely out of hand. 
They knew not what Moses wanted to do, nor did they 
comprehend what Moses was attempting to make the 
Lord threaten : except that he had in mind some dire 
mischief. Accordingly, the people decided that the 
best thing for them was to go forward as Joshua and 
Caleb proposed. So, early in the morning, they went 
up into the top of the mountain, saying, "We be 
here, and will go up unto the place which the Lord 
hath promised: for we have sinned." 

But Moses was more dissatisfied than ever. 
"Wherefore now do you transgress the command- 



PRE FA CE. 85 

ment of the Lord? But it shall not prosper." Not- 
withstanding, "they presumed to go up unto the hill- 
top : nevertheless the ark of the covenant of the Lord, 
and Moses, departed not out of the camp. 

"Then the Amalekites came down, and the Ca- 
naanites, which dwelt in that hill, and smote them, 
and discomfited them, even unto Hormah"; which 
was at a very considerable distance, — perhaps not 
less than thirty miles, though the positions are not 
very w^ell established. 

This is the story as told by the priestly chronicler, 
who, of course, said the best that could be said for 
Moses. But he makes a sorry tale of it. According 
to him, Moses, having been disappointed with the re- 
port made by his officers on the advisability of an im- 
mediate offensive, committed the blunder of summon- 
ing the whole assembly of the people to listen to it, and 
then, in the midst of the panic he had created, he lost 
his self-possession and finally his temper. Whereupon 
his soldiers, not knowing what to do or what he 
wanted, resolved to follow the advice of Joshua and 
advance. 

But this angered Moses more than ever, who com- 
mitted the unpardonable crime in the eyes of the sol- 
dier; he abandoned his men in the presence of the en- 
emy and by this desertion so weakened them that they 
sustained the worst defeat the Israelites suffered dur- 
ing the whole of their wanderings in the wilderness. 
Such a disaster brought on a crisis. The only wonder 
is that it had been so long delayed. Moses had had 



86 PREFACE. 

since the exodus a wonderful opportunity to test the 
truth of his theories. He had asserted that the uni- 
verse was the expression of a single and supreme mind, 
which operated according to a fixed moral law. That 
he alone, of all men, understood this mind, and could 
explain and administer its law, and that this he could 
and would do were he to obtain absolute obedience 
to the commands which he uttered. Were he only 
obeyed, he would win for his followers victory in battle, 
and a wonderful land to which they should march 
under his guidance, which was the Promised Land, and 
thereafter all was to be well with them. 

The disaster at Hormah had demonstrated that he 
was no general, and even on that very day the people 
had proof before their eyes that he knew nothing of the 
desert, and that the Lord knew no more than he, since 
there was no water at Kadesh, and to ask the congre- 
gation to encamp in such a spot was preposterous. 
Meanwhile Moses absorbed all the offices of honor and 
profit for his family. Aaron and his descendants mo- 
nopolized the priesthood, and this was a bitter griev- 
ance to other equally ambitious Levites. In short, the 
Mosaic leadership was vulnerable on every hand. At- 
tack on Moses was, therefore, inevitable, and it came 
from Korah, who was leader of the opposition. 

Korah was a cousin of Moses, and one of the ablest 
and most influential men in the camp, to whom Dathan 
and Abiram and "two hundred and fifty" princes of 
the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of re- 
nown, joined themselves. "And they gathered them- 



PRE FA CE. 87 

selves together against Moses and against Aaron, and 
said unto them, Ye take too much upon you, seeing 
all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and 
the Lord is among them: wherefore then lift you up 
yourselves above the congregation of the Lord?" 

Korah's grievance was that he had been, although 
a Levite, excluded from the priesthood in favor of the 
demands of Aaron and his sons. 

"And when Moses heard it, he fell upon his face." 

And yet something had to be done. Moses faced 
an extreme danger. His life hung upon the issue. 
As between him and Korah he had to demonstrate 
which was the better sorcerer or magician, and he could 
only do tliis by challenging Korah to the test of the or- 
deal : the familiar test of the second clause of the code 
of Hammurabi; "If the holy river makes that man to 
be innocent, and has saved him, he who laid the spell 
upon him shall be put to death. He who plunged into 
the holy river shall take to himself the house of him 
who wove the spell upon him." ^ And so with Elijah, 
to whom Ahaziah sent a captain of fifty to arrest him. 
And Elijah said to the captain of fifty, "If I be a man 
of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and con- 
sume thee and thy fifty. And there came dovNTi fire 
from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty." - 

In a word, the ordeal was the common form of test 

by which the enchanter, the sorcerer, or the magician 

always was expected to prove himself. Moses already 

^ Code of Laws promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon. 
Translated by C. H. W. Johns, M.A., § 2. 
2 2 Kings I, 10. 



88 PREFACE. 

had tried the test by fire at least once, and probably 
oftener. So now Moses reproached Korah because 
he was jealous of Aaron; "and what is Aaron, that ye 
murmur against him? . . . This do; Take you censers, 
Korah, and all his company; and put fire therein, and 
put incense in them before the Lord to-morrow; and 
. . . whom the Lord doth choose, he shall be holy: ye 
take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi." 

But it was not only about the priesthood that Moses 
had trouble on his hands. He had undertaken, with 
the help of the Lord, to lead the Israelites through the 
wilderness. But at every step of the way his incom- 
petence became more manifest. Even there, at that 
very camp of Kadesh, there was no water, and all the 
people clamored. And, therefore, Dathan and Abiram 
taunted him with failure, and with his injustice to those 
who served him. And Moses had no reply, except 
that he denied having abused his power. 

"And Moses sent to call Dathan and Abiram, the 
sons of Eliab: which said. We will not come up: 

"Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us up 
out of a land that floweth with milk and honey, to kill 
us in the wilderness, except thou make thyself alto- 
gether a prince over us? 

"Moreover, thou hast not brought us into a land that 
floweth with milk and honey, or given us inheritance of 
fields and vineyards: wilt thou put out the eyes of 
these men [probably alluding to the "spies "] ? We will 
not come up." 

This was evidently an exceedingly sore spot. Moses 



PREFA CE. 89 

had boasted that, because the "spies" had rendered 
to the congregation what they believed to be a true 
report instead of such a report as he had expected, the 
"Lord" had destroyed them by the plague. And it is 
pretty evident that the congregation believed him. It 
could hardly have been by pure accident that out of 
twelve men, the ten who had offended Moses should 
have died by the plague, and the other two alone 
should have escaped. Moses assumed to have the 
power of destroying whom he pleased by the pestilence 
through prayer to the "Lord," and he, indeed, proba- 
bly had the power, in such a spot as an ancient Jewish 
Nomad camp, not indeed by prayer, but by the very 
human means of communicating so virulent a poison 
as the plague: means which he very well understood. 

Therefore it is not astonishing that this insinuation 
should have stung Moses to the quick. 

"And Moses was very \NToth, and said unto the Lord, 
Respect not thou their offering: I have not taken one 
ass from them, neither have I hurt one of them." 

Then Moses turned to Korah, "Be thou and all thy 
company before the Lord, thou, and they, and Aaron, 
to-morrow : 

" And take every man his censer, and put incense in 
them, and bring ye before the Lord every man his 
censer, two hundred and fifty censers." 

And Korah, on the morrow, gathered all the con- 
gregation against them unto the door of the taber- 
nacle. And the "Lord" then as usual intervened and 
advised Moses to " separate yourselves from among this 



90 PREFACE. 

congregation, that I may consume them in a moment." 
And Moses did so. That is to say, he made an effort 
to divide the opposition, who, when united, he seems 
to have appreciated, were too strong for him. 

What happened next is not known. That Moses 
partially succeeded in his attempt at division is ad- 
mitted, for he persuaded Dathan and Abiram and their 
following to " depart . . . from the tents of these wicked 
men, and touch nothing of theirs, lest ye be consumed 
in all their sins." 

Exactly what occurred after this is unknown. The 
chronicle, of course, avers that " the earth opened her 
mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and 
all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their 
goods." But it could not have been this or anything 
like it, for the descendants of Korah, many generations 
after, were still doing service in the Temple, and at 
the time of the miracle the spectators were not intimi- 
dated by the sight, although all "Israel that were 
round about them fled at the cry of them: for they 
said. Lest the earth swallow us up also. 

" And there came out a fire from the Lord, and con- 
sumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered 
incense." 

Notwithstanding all which, the congregation next 
day were as hostile and as threatening as ever. 

"On the morrow all the congregation of the children 
of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, 
saying, Ye have killed the people of the Lord. . . . 

"And they fell upon their faces." 



PREFACE. 91 

In this crisis of his fate, when it seemed that nothing 
could save Moses from a conflict with the mass of his 
followers, who had renounced him, Moses showed that 
audacity and fertility of resource, which had hitherto 
enabled liim, and was destined until his death to en- 
able him, to maintain his position, at least as a prophet, 
among the Jewish people. 

The plague was always the most dreaded of visita- 
tions among the ancient Jews: far more terrible than 
war. It was already working havoc in the camp, as 
the death of the "spies" shows us. Moses always 
asserted his ability to control it, and at this instant, 
when, apparently, he and Aaron were lying on their 
faces before the angry people, he conceived the idea 
that he would put his theurgetic powers to the proof. 
Suddenly he called to Aaron to "take a censer and put 
fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and 
go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atone- 
ment for them: for there is wrath gone out from the 
Lord; the plague is begun." 

"And Aaron took as Moses commanded, and ran 
into the midst of the congregation; and, behold, the 
plague was begun among the people: . . . and made 
an atonement for the people. 

"And he stood between the dead and the living; 
and the plague was stayed. 

"Now they that died in the plague were fourteen 
thousand and seven hundred, beside them that died 
about the matter of Korah." 

Even this was not enough. The discontent con- 



92 PREFA CE. 

tinued, and Moses went on to meet it by the miracle 
of Aaron's rod. 

Moses took a rod from each tribe, twelve rods in all 
and on Aaron's rod he wrote the name of Levi, and 
Moses laid them out in the tabernacle. And the next 
day Moses examined the rods and showed the con- 
gregation how Aaron's rod had budded. And Moses 
declared that Aaron's rod should be kept for a token 
against the rebels : and that they must stop their mur- 
murings "that they die not." 

This manipulation of the plague by Moses, upon 
what seems to have been a sudden inspiration, was a 
stroke of genius in the way of quackery. He was, 
indeed, in this way almost portentous. It had a 
great and terrifying effect upon the people, who were 
completely subdued by it. Against corporeal enemies 
they might hope to prevail, but they were helpless 
against the plague. And they all cried out with one 
accord, " Behold we die, we perish, we all perish. Who- 
soever Cometh anything near unto the tabernacle of 
the Lord shall die: shall we be consumed with dying .'^" 

As I have already pointed out, Moses was a very 
great theurgist, as many saints and prophets have 
been. When in the actual presence of others he evi- 
dently had the power of creating a belief in himself 
which approached the miraculous, so far as disease 
was concerned. And he presumed on this power and 
took correspondingly great risks. The case of the 
brazen serpent is an example. The story is — and 
there is no reason to doubt its substantial truth — that 



PREFACE. 93 

the Hebrews were attacked by venomous serpents 
probably in the neighborhood of Mount Hor, where 
Aaron died, and thereupon Moses set up a large 
brazen serpent on a pole, and declared that whoever 
would look upon the serpent should live. Also, appar- 
ently, it did produce an effect upon those who believed : 
which, of course, is not an unprecedented phenomenon 
among faith healers. But what is interesting in this 
historical anecdote is not that Moses performed cer- 
tain faith cures by the suggestion of a serpent, but that 
the Israelites themselves, when out of the presence of 
Moses, recognized that he had perpetrated on them a 
vulgar fraud. For example. King Hezekiah destroj-ed 
this relic, which had been preserved in the Temple, 
calling it "Nehushtan," "a brazen thing," as an expres- 
sion of his contempt. And what is more remarkable 
still is that although Hezekiah reigned four or five 
centuries after the exodus, yet science had made no 
such advance in the interval as to justify this con- 
tempt. Hezekiah seems to have been every whit as 
credulous as were the pilgrims who looked on the 
brazen serpent and were healed. Hezekiah "was 
sick unto death, and Isaiah came to see him, and told 
him to set his house in order; for thou shalt die, and 
not live. . . . And Hezekiah wept sore." 

Then, like Moses, Isaiah had another revelation in 
which he was directed to return to Hezekiah, and tell 
him that he was to live fifteen years longer. And Isai- 
ah told the attendants to take "a lump of figs." "And 
they took it and laid it on the boil, and he recovered." 



94 PREFACE. 

Afterward Hezekiah asked of Isaiah how he was to 
know that the Lord would keep his word and give 
him fifteen additional years of life. Isaiah told him 
that the shadow should go back ten degrees on the dial. 
And Isaiah "cried unto the Lord," and he brought the 
shadow ten degrees backward "by which it had gone 
down in the dial of Ahaz." ^ And yet this man Heze- 
kiah, who could believe in this marvellous cure of 
Isaiah, repudiated with scorn the brazen serpent as 
an insult to credulity. The contrast between Moses, 
who hesitated not to take all risks in matters of dis- 
ease with which he felt himself competent to cope, and 
his timidity and hesitation in matters of war, is as- 
tounding. But it is a common phenomenon with the 
worker of miracles and indicates the limit of faith at 
which the saint or prophet has always betrayed the 
impostor. For example: Saint Bernard, when he 
preached in 1146 the Second Crusade, made miracu- 
lous cures by the thousand, so much so that there was 
danger of being killed in the crowds which pressed 
upon him. And yet this same saint, when chosen by 
the crusaders four years later, in 1150, to lead them 
because of his power to constrain victory by the inter- 
vention of God, wrote, after the crusaders' defeat, 
in terror to the pope to protect him, because he was 
unfit to take such responsibility. 

But even with this reservation Moses could not gain 
the complete confidence of the congregation and the 
insecurity of his position finally broke him down. 
1 2 Kings XX, 11. 



PREFACE. 95 

At this same place of Kadesh, Miriam died, "and 
the people chode with Moses because there was no 
water for the congregation." ^ Moses thereupon with- 
drew and, as usual, received a revelation. And the 
Lord directed him to take his rod, "and speak ye unto 
the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his 
water." 

And Moses gathered the congregation and said 
unto them, "Hear now, ye rebels; must w^e fetch you 
water out of this rock.'^" 

"And he smote the rock twice: and the water came 
out abundantly." 

But Moses felt that he had offended God, "Because 
ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the 
children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this con- 
gregation into the land which I have given them." 

Moses had become an old man, and he felt himself 
unequal to the burden he had assumed. He recog- 
nized that his theory of cause and effect had broken 
down, and that the "Lord" whom at the outset he had 
firmly believed to be an actual and efficient power to 
be dominated by him, either could not or would not 
support him in emergency. In short, he had learned 
that he was an adventurer who must trust to himself. 
Hence, after Hormah he was a changed man. Nothing 
could induce him to lead the Jews across the Jordan 
to attack the peoples on the west bank, and though 
the congregation made a couple of campaigns against 
Sihon and Og, whose ruthlessness has always been a 
* Numbers xx, 3. 



96 PREFACE. 

stain on Moses, the probability is that Moses did not 
meddle much with the active command. Had he done 
so, the author of Deuteronomy would have given the 
story in more detail and Moses more credit. All that 
is attributed to Moses is a division of the conquests 
made together with Joshua, and a fruitless prayer to the 
Lord that he might be permitted to cross the Jordan. 

Meanwhile life was ending for him. His elder sister 
Miriam died at Kadesh, and Aaron died somewhat 
later at Mount Hor, which is supposed to lie about as 
far to the east of Kadesh as Hormah is to the west, but 
there are circumstances about the death of Aaron which 
point to Moses as having had more to do with it than 
of having been a mere passive spectator thereof. 

The whole congregation is represented as having 
"journeyed from Kadesh and come unto Mount Hor 
... by the coast of the land of Edom," and there 
the "Lord" spoke unto Moses and Aaron, and ex- 
plained that Aaron was to be "gathered unto his 
people, . . . because ye rebelled ... at the water of 
Meribah." Therefore Moses was to "take Aaron and 
Eleazar his son, and bring them up unto Mount Hor : 
and strip Aaron of his garments, and put them upon 
Eleazar," . . . and that Aaron . . . shall die there. 

"And they went up into Mount Hor in the sight of 
all the congregation. And Moses stripped Aaron of 
his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son ; and 
Aaron died there in the top of the mount: and Moses 
and Eleazar came down from the mount." ^ 
1 Numbers xx, 22-28. 



PRE FA CE. 97 

Now it is incredible that all this happened as 
straightforwardly as the chronicle would have us be- 
lieve. Aaron was an old man and probably failing, but 
his death was not imminent. On the contrary, he had 
strength to climb Mount Hor with Moses, without aid, 
and there is no hint that he suffered from any ailment 
likely to end his life suddenly. Moses took care that 
he and Eleazar should be alone with Aaron so that 
there should be no witness as to what occurred, and 
INIoses alone knew what was expected. 

Moses had time to take off the priestly garments, 
which were the insignia of office and to put them on 
Eleazar, and then, when all was ready, Aaron simply 
ceased to breathe at the precise moment when it 
was convenient for Moses to have him die, for the 
policy of Moses evidently demanded that Aaron should 
live no longer. Under the conditions of the march 
Moses was evidently preparing for his own death, and 
for a complete change in the administration of affairs. 
Appreciating that his leadership had broken down and 
that the system he had created was collapsing, he had 
dawdled as long on the east side of the Jordan as the 
patience of the congregation would permit. An ad- 
vance had become inevitable, but Moses recognized his 
own inability to lead it. The command had to be 
delegated to a younger man and that man was Joshua. 
Eleazar, on the other hand, was the only available 
candidate for the high priesthood, and Moses took the 
opportunity of making the investiture on Mount Hor. 
So Aaron passed away, a sacrifice to the optimism of 



98 PREFACE. 

Moses. Next came the turn of Moses himself. The 
whole story is told in Deuteronomy. Within, prob- 
ably, something less than a year after Aaron's death 
the "Lord" made a like communication to Moses. 

"Get thee up . . . unto Mount Nebo, which is in the 
land of Moab, that is over against Jericho; 

"And die in the Mount whither thou goest up, and be 
gathered unto thy people; as Aaron, thy brother died 
in Mount Hor; 

"Because ye trespassed against me among the 
children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in 
the wilderness of Zin, because ye sanctified me not in 
the midst of the children of Israel. 

"And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto 
the mountain of Nebo, . . . And the Lord showed him 
all the land of Gilead, unto Dan. 

"And Moses the servant of the Lord died there 
in the land of Moab, according to the word of the 
Lord. . . . But no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto 
this day. 

"And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old 
when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force 
abated." 

The facts, as preserved by Josephus, appear to have 
been these: Moses ascended the mountain with only 
the elders, the high priest Eleazar, and Joshua. \i 
the top of the mountain he dismissed the elders, and 
then, as he was embracing Joshua and Eleazar and 
still speaking, a cloud covered him, and he disappeared 
in a ravine. In other words, he killed himself. 



PREFACE. 99 

Such is the story of Moses, a fragment of history in- 
teresting enough in itself, but especially material to us 
not only because of the development of the thought 
dealt with in the following volumes, but of the infer- 
ences which, at the present time, it permits us to draw 
touching our own immediate future. 

Moses was the first great optimist of whom any 
record remains, and one of the greatest. He was the 
prototype of all those who have followed. He was a 
visionary. All optimists must be visionaries. Moses 
based the social system which he tried to organize, not 
on observed facts, but on a priori theories evolved out 
of his owTi mind, and he met with the failure that all 
men of that cast of mind must meet with when he 
sought to realize his visions. His theory was that the 
universe about him was the expression of an infinite 
mind which operated according to law. That this 
mind, or consciousness, was intelligent and capable of 
communicating with man. That it did, in fact, so 
communicate through him, as a medium, and that 
other men had only to receive humbty and obey im- 
plicitly his revelations to arrive at a condition nearly 
approaching, if not absolutely reaching, perfection, 
while they should enjoy happiness and prosperity in 
the land in which they should be permitted, by an 
infinite and supernatural power and wisdom, to 
dwell. All this is not alien to the attitude of scien- 
tific optimists at the present day, who anticipate pro- 
gressive perfection. 

Let us consider, for a moment, whither these a priori 



100 PREFACE. 

theories led, when put in practice upon human beings, 
incUiding himself. And, in the first place, it will prob- 
ably be conceded that no optimist could have, or ever 
hope to have, a fairer opportunity to try his experiment 
than had Moses on that plastic Hebrew community 
which he undertook to lead through Arabia. Also it 
must be admitted that Moses, as an expounder of a 
moral code, achieved success. The moral principles 
which he laid down have been accepted as sound from 
that day to this, and are still written up in our churches, 
as a standard for men and women, however slackly 
they may be observed. But when we come to mark 
the methods by which Moses obtained acceptance of 
his code by his contemporaries, and, above all, sought 
to constrain obedience to himself and to it, we find the 
prospect unalluring. To begin with, Moses had only 
begun the exodus when he learned from his practical 
father-in-law that the system he employed was fan- 
tastic and certain to fail : his notion being that he should 
sit and judge causes himself, as the mouthpiece of the 
infinite, and that therefore each judgment he gave 
would demand a separate miracle or imposture. This 
could not be contemplated. Therefore Moses was 
constrained to impose his code in writing, once for all, 
by one gigantic fraud which he must perpetrate him- 
self. This he tried at Sinai, unblushingly declaring 
that the stone tablets which he produced were "writ- 
ten with the finger of God"; wherefore, as they must 
have been written by himself, or under his personal 
supervision, he brazenly and deliberately lied. His 



PREFACE. 101 

good faith was obviously suspected, and this suspicion 
caused disastrous results. To support his lie Moses 
caused three thousand unsuspecting and trusting men 
to be murdered in cold blood, whose only crime was 
that they would have preferred another leadersliip to 
his, and because, had they been able to effect their 
purpose, they would have disappointed his ambition. 
To follow Moses further in the course which opti- 
mism enforced upon him would be tedious, as it would 
be to recapitulate the story which has already been 
told. It suffices to say shortly that, at every camp, 
he had to sink to deeper depths of fraud, deception, 
lying, and crime in order to maintain his credit. It 
might be that, as at Meribah, it was only claiming for 
himself a miracle which he knew he could not work, 
and for claiming which, instead of giving the credit 
to God, he openly declared he deserved and must re- 
ceive punishment; or it might be some impudent 
quackery, like the brazen serpent, which at least was 
harmless; or it might have been complicated combi- 
nations which suggest a deeper shade; as, for example, 
the outbreak of the plague, after Korah's rebellion, 
which bears the aspect of a successful effort at intimi- 
dation to support his own wavering credit. But the 
result was always the same. Moses had promised 
that the supernatural power he pretended to control 
should sustain him and give victory. Possibly, when 
he started on the exodus he verily believed that such 
a power existed, was amenable and could be con- 
strained to intervene. He found that he had been 



102 PREFACE. 

mistaken on all these heads, and when he accepted 
these facts as final, nothing remained for him but sui- 
cide, as has been related. It only remains to glance, 
for a single moment, at what befell, when he had gone, 
the society he had organized on the optimistic prin- 
ciple of the approach of human beings toward perfec- 
tion. During the period of the Judges, when "there 
was no king in Israel, but every man did that which 
was right in his own eyes," ^ anarchy supervened, in- 
deed, but also the whole Mosaic system broke down 
because of the imbecility of the men on whom Moses 
relied to Uft the people toward perfection. 

Eli, a descendant of Aaron, was high priest, and a 
judge, being the predecessor of Samuel, the last of the 
judges. Now Eli had two sons who "were sons of 
Belial; they knew not the Lord." 

Eli, being very old, "heard all that his sons did unto 
all Israel; and how they lay with the women that as- 
sembled at the door of the tabernacle. ..." And Eli 
argued with them; "notwithstanding they barkened 
not unto the voice of their father." 

Samuel succeeded Eli. He was not a descendant of 
Aaron, but became a judge, apparently, upon his own 
merits. But as a judge he did not constrain his sons 
any better than Eli had his, for "they took bribes, and 
perverted judgment." So the elders of Israel came to 
Samuel and said, " Give us a king to judge us." " And 
Samuel prayed unto the Lord," though he disliked 
the idea. Yet the result was inevitable. The king- 
' Judges XVII, 6. 



PREFACE. 103 

dom was set up, and the Mosaic society perished. 
Nothing was left of Mosaic optimism but the tradi- 
tion. Also there was the Mosaic morality, and what 
that amounted to may best, perhaps, be judged by 
David, who was the most perfect flower of the perfec- 
tion to which humanity was to attain under the Mo- 
saic law, and has always stood for what was best in 
Mosaic optimism. David's morality is perhaps best 
illustrated by the story of Uriah the Hittite. 

One day David saw Uriah's wife taking a bath on 
her housetop and took a fancy to her. The story is all 
told in the Second of Samuel. How David sent for 
her, took her into the palace, and murdered Uriah by 
sending him to Joab who commanded the army, and 
instructing* Joab to set Uriah in the forefront of the 
hottest battle, and "retire ye from him that he may 
be smitten and die." And Uriah was killed. 

Then came the famous parable by Nathan of the 
ewe lamb. "And David's anger was greatly kindled 
against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the Lord 
liveth, the man who hath done this thing shall surely 
die. 

"And Nathan said to David. Thou art the man." 

And Nathan threatened David with all kinds of dis- 
aster and even with death, and David was very re- 
pentant and "he fasted and lay all night upon the 
earth." But for all that, when assured that nothing 
worse was to happen to him than the loss of the son 
Bathsheba had borne him, David comforted Bathsheba. 
He by no means gave her up. On the contrary, "he 



104 PREFACE. 

went in unto her . . . and she bare him a son, and he 
called his name Solomon: and the Lord loved him." 

Again the flesh had prevailed. And so it has always 
been with each new movement which has been stim- 
ulated by an idealism inspired by a belief that the 
spirit was capable of generating an impulse which would 
overcome the flesh and which could cause men to move 
toward perfection along any other path than the least 
resistant. And this because man is an automaton, 
and can move no otherwise. In this point of view 
notliing can be more instructive than to compare the 
Roman with the Mosaic civilization, for the Romans 
were a sternly practical people and worshipped force 
as Moses worshipped an ideal. 

As Moses dreamed of realizing the divine conscious- 
ness on earth by introspection and by prayer, so the 
Romans supposed that they could attain to prosperity 
and happiness on earth by the development of su- 
perior physical force and the destruction of all rivals. 
Cato the Censor was the typical Roman landowner, 
the type of the class which built up the great vested 
interest in land which always moved and dominated 
Rome. He expressed the Roman ideal in his famous 
declaration in the Senate, when he gave his vote for 
the Third Punic War; "Delenda est Carthago," Car- 
thage must be destroyed. And Carthage was de- 
stroyed because to a Roman to destroy Carthage 
was a logical competitive necessity. Subsequently, 
the Romans took the next step in their social adjust- 
ment at home. They deified the energy which had 



PREFA CE. 105 

destroyed Carthage. The incarnation of physical 
force became the head of the State ; — the Emperor 
when Hving, the Divus, when dead. And this con- 
ception gained expression in the Law. This godhke 
energy found vent in the Imperial will; ''Quod prin- 
cipi placuit, legis habet vigorem." ^ 

Nothing could be more antagonistic to the Mosaic 
philosophy, which invoked the supernatural unity as 
authority for every pohce regulation. Moreover, the 
Romans carried out their principle relentlessly, to 
their own destruction. That great vested interest 
which had absorbed the land of Italy, and had erected 
the administrative entity which policed it, could not 
hold and cultivate its land profitably, in competition 
with other lands such as Egj'^pt, North Africa, or As- 
sj-ria, which were worked by a cheaper and more 
resistant people. Therefore the Roman landowners 
imported this competitive population from their homes, 
having first seized them as slaves, and cultivated their 
own Italian fields with them after the eviction of the 
original native peasants, who could not survive on the 
scanty nutriment on which the eastern races throve.^ 

1 Inst. 1, 2, 6. 

2 I have dealt with this subject at length in my Law of Civiliza- 
tion and Decay, chapter ii, to which I must refer the reader. More 
fully still in the French translation. "This unceasing emigration 
gradually changed the character of the rural population, and a 
similar alteration took place in the army. As early as the time of 
Civsar, Italy was exhausted; his legions were mainly raised in Gaul, 
and as the native farmers sank into serfdom or slavery, and then 
at last vanished, recrviits were drawn more and more from beyond 
the limits of the empire." I cannot repeat mj' arguments here, but 
I am not aware that they have been seriously controverted. 



106 PREFACE. 

The Roman law, the Romana lex, was as gigantic, 
as original, and as comprehensive a structure as was 
the empire which gave to it expression. Modern Euro- 
pean law is but a dilution thereof. The Roman law 
attained perfection, as I conceive, about the time of 
the Antonines, through the great jurists who then 
flourished. If one might name a particular moment at 
which so vast and complex a movement culminated, 
one would be tempted to suggest the reign of Hadrian, 
who appointed Salvius Julianus to draw up the edictum 
perpetuum, or permanent edict, in the year 132 a.d. 
Thenceforward the magistrate had to use his discre- 
tion only when the edict of Julianus did not apply. 

I am not aware that any capital principle of munici- 
pal law has been evolved since that time, and the aston- 
ishing power of the Roman mind can only be appre- 
ciated when it is remembered that the whole of this 
colossal fabric was original. Modern European law 
has been only a servile copy. But, regard being had to 
the position of the emperor in relation to the people, 
and more especially in relation to the vast bureau- 
cracy of Rome, which was the embodiment of the 
vested interest which was Rome itself, the adherence 
of Roman thought to the path of least resistance was 
absolute. "So far as the cravings of Stoicism found 
historical and political fulfilment, they did so in the 
sixty years of Hadrian and the Antonines, and so far 
again as an individual can embody the spirit of an age, 
its highest and most representative impersonation is 
unquestionably to be found in the person of Marcus 



PREFACE. 107 

Antoninus. . . . Stoicism faced the whole problem of 
existence, and devoted as searching an investigation 
to processes of being and of thought, to physics and 
to dialectic, as to the moral problems presented by the 
emotions and the will." ^ 

Such was stoicism, of which Marcus Aurelius was 
and still remains the foremost expression. He ad- 
mitted that as emperor his first duty was to sacri- 
fice himself for the public and he did his duty with a 
constancy which ultimately cost him his life. Among 
these duties was the great duty of naming his succes- 
sor. The Roman Empire never became strictly he- 
reditary. It hinged, as perhaps no other equally de- 
veloped system ever hinged, upon the personality of 
the emperor, who incarnated the administrative bu- 
reaucracy which gave efiPect to the Pax Romana and 
the Romana lex from the Euphrates to the Atlantic 
and from Scotland to the Tropic of Cancer. Of all 
men ISIarcus Aurelius was the most conscientious and 
the most sincere, and he understood, as perhaps no 
other man in like position ever understood, the respon- 
sibility which impinged on him, to allow no private pre- 
vention to impose an unfit emperor upon the empire. 
But Marcus had a son Commodus, who was nineteen 
when his father died, and who had already developed 
traits which caused foreboding. Nevertheless, Mar- 
cus associated Commodus with himself in the empire 
when Commodus was fourteen and Commodus at- 

^ Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, in English, by Gerald H. Rendall, 
Introduction, xxvii. 



108 PREFACE. 

tained to absolute power when Marcus died. Subse- 
quently, Commodus became the epitome of all that was 
basest and worst in a ruler. He was murdered by 
the treachery of Marcia, his favorite concubine, and 
the Senate decreed that "his body should be dragged 
with a hook into the stripping room of the gladiators, 
to satiate the public fury." ^ 

From that day Rome entered upon the acute stage 
of her decline, and she did so very largely because 
Marcus Aurelius, the ideal stoic, was incapable of 
violating the great law of nature which impelled him 
to follow not reason, but the path of least resistance in 
choosing a successor; or, in other words, the instinct 
of heredity. Moreover, this instinct and not reason 
is or has been, among the strongest which operate 
upon men, and makes them automata. It is the basis 
upon which the family rests, and the family is the 
essence of social cohesion. Also the hereditary in- 
stinct has been the prime motor which has created 
constructive municipal jurisprudence and which has 
evolved religion. 

With the death of Marcus Aurelius individual com- 
petition may be judged to have done its work, and pres- 
ently, as the population changed its character under 
the stress thereof, a new phase opened : a phase which 
is marked, as such phases usually are, by victory in 
war. Marcus Aurelius died in 180 a.d. Substantially 
a century later, in 312, Constantine won the battle 
of the Milvian Bridge with his troops fighting under 
^ Decline and Fall, chap. iv. 



PREFACE. 109 

the Labarum, a standard bearing a cross with the 
device "In hoc signo vinces"; By this sign conquer. 
Probably Constantine had himself scanty faith in the 
Labarum, but he speculated upon it as a means to 
arouse enthusiasm in his men. It served his purpose, 
and finding the step he had taken on the whole satis- 
factory, he followed it up by accepting baptism in 
337 A.D. 

From this time forward the theory of the possibility 
of securing divine or supernatural aid by various 
forms of incantation or prayer gained steadily in power 
for about eight centuries, until at length it became a 
passion and gave birth to a school of optimism, the 
most overwhelming and the most brilliant which the 
world has ever known and which evolved an age 
whose end we still await. 

The Germans of the fourth century were a very 
simple race, who comprehended little of natural laws, 
and who therefore referred phenomena they did not 
understand to supernatural intervention. This inter- 
vention could only be controlled by priests, and thus 
the invasions caused a rapid rise in the influence of the 
sacred class. The power of every ecclesiastical or- 
ganization has always rested on the miracle, and the 
clergy have always proved their divine commission as 
did Moses. This was eminently the case w'ith the 
mediaeval Church. At the outset Christianity was 
socialistic, and its spread among the poor was appar- 
ently caused by the pressure of servile competition ; for 
the sect only became of enough importance to be per- 



110 PREFACE. 

secuted under Nero, contemporaneously with the first 
signs of distress which appeared through the debase- 
ment of the denarius. But socialism was only a pass- 
ing phase, and disappeared as the money value of the 
miracle rose, and brought wealth to the Church. 
Under the Emperor Decius, about 250, the magis- 
trates thought the Christians opulent enough to use 
gold and silver vessels in their service, and by the 
fourth century the supernatural so possessed the popu- 
lar mind that Constantine, as we have seen, not only 
allowed himself to be converted by a miracle, but 
used enchantment as an engine of war. 

The action of the Milvian Bridge, fought in 312, 
by which Constantine established himself at Rome, 
was probably the point whence nature began to dis- 
criminate decisively against the vested interest of 
Western Europe. Capital had already abandoned 
Italy; Christianity was soon after officially recog- 
nized, and during the next century the priest began to 
rank with the soldier as a force in war. 

Meanwhile, as the population sank into exhaustion, 
it yielded less and less revenue, the police deteriorated, 
and the guards became unable to protect the frontier. 
In 376, the Goths, hard pressed by the Huns, came to 
the Danube and implored to be taken as subjects by 
the emperor. After mature deliberation the Council 
of Valens granted the prayer, and some five hundred 
thousand Germans were cantoned in Mcesia. The 
intention of the government was to scatter this multi- 
tude through the provinces as coloni, or to draft them 



PREFACE. Ill 

into the legions; but the detachment detailed to handle 
them was too feeble, the Goths mutinied, cut the 
guard to pieces, and having ravaged Thrace for two 
years, defeated and killed Valens at Hadrianople. In 
another generation the disorganization of the Roman 
army had become complete, and Alaric gave it its 
death-blow in his campaign of 410. 

Alaric was not a Gothic king, but a barbarian de- 
serter, who, in 392, was in the service of Theodosius. 
Subsequently he sometimes held imperial commands, 
and sometimes led bands of marauders on his own 
account, but was always in difficulty about his pay. 
Finally, in the revolution in which Stilicho w^as mur- 
dered, a corps of auxiliaries mutinied and chose him 
their general. Alleging that his arrears were unpaid, 
Alaric accepted the command, and with this army 
sacked Rome. 

During the campaign the attitude of the Christians 
was more interesting than the strategy of the soldiers. 
Alaric was a robber, leading mutineers, and yet the 
orthodox historians did not condemn him. They did 
not condemn him because the sacred class instinctively 
loved the barbarians whom they could overawe, 
whereas they could make little impression on the ma- 
terialistic intellect of the old centralized society. Un- 
der the empire the priests, like all other individuals, had 
to obey the power which paid the police; and as long as 
a revenue could be drawn from the provinces, the 
Christian hierarchy were subordinate to the monied 
bureaucracy who had the means to coerce them. 



112 PREFACE. 

Yet only very slowly, as the empire disintegrated, did 
the theocratic idea take shape. As late as the ninth 
century the pope prostrated himself before Charle- 
magne, and did homage as to a Roman emperor.^ 

Saint Benedict founded Monte Cassino in 529, but 
centuries elapsed before the Benedictine order rose to 
power. The early convents were isolated and feeble, 
and much at the mercy of the laity, who invaded and 
debauched them. Abbots, like bishops, were often 
soldiers, who lived within the walls with their wives 
and children, their hawks, their hounds, and their 
men-at-arms; and it has been said that, in all France, 
Corbie and Fleury alone kept always something of 
their early discipline. 

Only in the early years of the most lurid century of 
the Middle Ages, when decentralization culminated, 
and the imagination began to gain its fullest intensity, 
did the period of monastic consolidation open with the 
foundation of Cluny. In 910 William of Aquitaine 
draw a charter ^ which, so far as possible, provided for 
the complete independence of his new corporation. 
There was no episcopal visitation, and no interference 
with the election of the abbot. The monks were put 
directly under the protection of the pope, who was 
made their sole superior. John XI confirmed this char- 
ter by his bull of 932, and authorized the affiliation of 
all converts who wished to share in the reform.^ 

* Perz, Amiales Lauressenses, i, 188. 
^ Bruel, Rerueil des Charles de VAhhaye de Cluny, i, 124. 
3 Bull. Chin. p. 2, col. 1. Also Luchaire, Manuel des Institutions 
Fratigaises, 93, 95, where the authorities are collected. 



PREFACE. 113 

The growth of Cluny was marvellous; by the 
twelfth century two thousand houses obeyed its rule, 
and its wealth was so great, and its buildings so vast, 
that in 1'245 Innocent IV, the Emperor Baldwin, and 
Saint Louis were all lodged together within its walls, 
and with them all the attendant trains of prelates 
and nobles with their servants. 

In the eleventh century no other force of equal en- 
ergy existed. The monks were the most opulent, the 
ablest, and the best organized society in Europe, and 
their effect upon mankind was proportioned to their 
strength. They intuitively sought autocratic power, 
and during the centuries when nature favored them, 
they passed from triumph to triumph. They first 
seized upon the papacy and made it self -perpetuating; 
they then gave battle to the laity for the possession 
of the secular hierarchy, which had been under tem- 
poral control since the very foundation of the Church. 

According to the picturesque legend, Bruno, Bishop 
of Toul, seduced by the flattery of courtiers and the 
allurements of ambition, accepted the tiara from the 
emperor, and set out upon his journey to Italy with a 
splendid retinue, and with his robe and crown. On his 
way he turned aside at Cluny, where Hildebrand was 
prior. Hildebrand, filled with the spirit of God, re- 
proached him with having seized upon the seat of the 
vicar of Christ by force, and accepted the holy oflSce 
from the sacrilegious hand of a layman. He exhorted 
Bruno to cast away his pomp, and to cross the Alps 
humbly as a pilgrim, assuring him that the priests and 



114 PREFACE. 

people of Rome would recognize him as their bishop, 
and elect him according to canonical forms. Then he 
would taste the joys of a pure conscience, having en- 
tered the fold of Christ as a shepherd and not as a rob- 
ber. Inspired by these words, Bruno dismissed his 
train, and left the convent gate as a pilgrim. He 
walked barefoot, and when after two months of pious 
meditations he stood before Saint Peter's, he spoke to 
the people and told them it was their privilege to elect 
the pope, and since he had come unwillingly he would 
return again, were he not their choice. 

He was answered with acclamations, and on Feb- 
ruary 2, 1049, he was enthroned as Leo IX. His first 
act was to make Hildebrand his minister. 

The legend tells of the triumph of Cluny as no his- 
torical facts could do. Ten years later, in the reign of 
Nicholas II, the theocracy made itself self -perpetuat- 
ing through the assumption of the election of the pope 
by the college of cardinals, and in 1073 Hildebrand, the 
incarnation of monasticism, was crowned under the 
name of Gregory VII. 

With Hildebrand's election, war began. The Coun- 
cil of Rome, held in 1075, decreed that holy orders 
should not be recognized where investiture had been 
granted by a layman, and that princes guilty of con- 
ferring investiture should be excommunicated. The 
Council of the next year, which excommunicated the 
emperor, also enunciated the famous propositions of 
Baronius — the full expression of the theocratic idea. 
The priest had grown to be a god on earth. 



PREFACE. 115 

"So strong in this confidence, for the honour and 
defence of your Church, on behalf of the omnipotent 
God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, by 
your power and authority, I forbid the government of 
the German and Italian kingdoms, to King Henry, 
the son of the Emperor Henry, who, with unheard-of 
arrogance, has rebelled against your Church. I ab- 
solve all Christians from the oaths they have made 
or may make to him, and I forbid that any one should 
obey him as king." ^ 

Henry marched on Italy, but in all European history 
there has been no drama more tremendous than the ex- 
piation of his sacrilege. To his soldiers the world was 
a vast space, peopled by those fantastic beings which 
are still seen on Gothic towers. These demons obeyed 
the monk of Rome, and his army, melting from about 
the emperor under a nameless horror, left him helpless. 

Gregory lay like a magician in the fortress of Ca- 
nossa: but he had no need of carnal weapons, for when 
the emperor reached the Alps he was almost alone. 
Then his imagination also took fire, the panic seized 
him, and he sued for mercy. 

On August 7, 1106, Henry died at Liege, an outcast 
and a mendicant, and for five long years his body lay 
at the church door, an accursed thing which no man 
dared to bury. 

Gregory prevailed because, to the understanding 
of the eleventh century, the evidence at hand indicated 
that he embodied in a high degree the infinite energy. 
^ Migne, cxlviii, 790. 



116 PREFACE. 

The eleventh century was intensely imaginative and 
the evidence which appealed to it was those phenom- 
ena of trance, hypnotism, and catalepsy which are as 
mysterious now as they were then, but whose effect 
was then to create an overpowering demand for mir- 
acle-working substances. The sale of these substances 
gradually drew the larger portion of the wealth of the 
community into the hands of the clergy, and with 
wealth went temporal power. No vested interest in 
any progressive community has probably ever been 
relatively stronger, for the Church found no difficulty, 
when embarrassed, in establishing and operating a 
thorough system for exterminating her critics. 

Under such a pressure modern civilization must have 
sunk into some form of caste had the mediaeval mind 
resembled any antecedent mind, but the middle age, 
though superficially imaginative, was fundamentally 
materialistic, as the history of the crusades showed. 

At Canossa the laity conceded as a probable hy- 
pothesis that the Church could miraculously control 
nature ; but they insisted that if the Church possessed 
such power, she must use that power for the common 
good. Upon this point they would not compromise, 
nor would they permit delay. During the chaos of 
the ninth century turmoil and violence reached a stage 
at which the aspirations of most Christians ended 
with self-preservation; but when the discovery and 
working of the Harz silver had brought with it some 
semblance of order, an intense yearning possessed 
both men and women to ameliorate their lot. If relics 



PREFA CE. 117 

could give protection against oppression, disease, fam- 
ine, and death, then rehcs must be obtained, and, if the 
cross and the tomb were the most effective rehcs, then 
the cross and the tomb must be conquered at any- 
cost. In the north of Europe especially, misery was 
so acute that the people gladly left their homes upon 
the slenderest promise of betterment, even following 
a vagrant like Peter the Hermit, who was neither sol- 
dier nor priest. There is a passage in William of Tyre 
which has been often quoted to exjjlain a frenzy which 
is otherwise inexplicable, and in the old English of 
Caxton the words still glow with the same agony which 
makes lurid the supplication of the litany, — "From 
battle and murder, and from sudden death. Good 
Lord deliver us": 

"Of chary te men spack not, debates, discordes, and 
warres were nyhe oueral, in suche wyse, that it seemed, 
that thende of the world was nyghe, by the signes 
that our lord sayth in the gospell, ffor pestylences and 
famynes were grete on therthe, ferdfulness of heuen, 
tremblyng of therthe in many places, and many other 
thinges there were that ought to fere the hertes of 
men. . . . 

"Theprynces and the barons brente and destroyed 
the contrees of theyr neyghbours, yf ony man had 
saved ony thynge in theyr kepyng, theyr owne lordes 
toke them and put them in prison and in greuous tor- 
mentis, for to take fro them suche as they had, in suche 
qyse that the chyldren of them that had ben riche 
men, men myght see them goo fro dore to dore, for to 



118 PREFACE. 

begge and gete theyr brede, and some deye for hungre 
and mesease." ^ 

Throughout the eleventh century the excitement 
touching the virtues of the holy places in Judea grew, 
until Gregory VII, about the time of Canossa, per- 
ceived that a paroxysm was at hand, and considered 
leading it, but on the whole nothing is so suggestive 
of the latent scepticism of the age as the irresolution 
of the popes at this supreme moment. The laity were 
the pilgrims and the agitators. The kings sought the 
relics and took the cross; the clergy hung back. Rob- 
ert, Duke of Normandy, for example, the father of 
William the Conqueror, died in 1035 from hardship at 
Nicaea when returning from Palestine, absorbed to the 
last in the relics which he had collected, but the popes 
stayed at home. Whatever they may have said in pri- 
vate, neither Hildebrand nor Victor nor Urban moved 
officially until they were swept forward by the torrent. 
They shunned responsibility for a war which they 
would have passionately promoted had they been 
sure of victory. The man who finally kindled the 
conflagration was a half-mad fanatic, a stranger to the 
hierarchy. No one knew the family of Peter the Her- 
mit, or whence he came, but he certainly was not an 
ecclesiastic in good standing. Inflamed by fasting 
and penance, Peter followed the throng of pilgrims to 
Jerusalem, and there, wrought upon by what he saw, he 
sought the patriarch. Peter asked the patriarch if 

^ Godcffroy of Bologne, by William, Archbishop of Tyre, trans- 
lated from the French by William Caxton, London, 1893, 21, 22. 



PREFACE. 119 

nothing could be done to protect the pilgrims, and to 
retrieve the Holy Places. The patriarch replied, 
"Nothing, unless God will touch the heart of the west- 
ern princes, and will send them to succor the Holy- 
City." The patriarch did not propose meddling him- 
self, nor did it occur to him that the pope should inter- 
vene. He took a rationalistic view of the Moslem 
military power. Peter, on the contrary, was logical, 
arguing from eleven th-centurj^ premises. If he could 
but receive a divine mandate, he would raise an invin- 
cible army. He prayed. His prayer was answered. 
One day while prostrated before the sepulchre he heard 
Christ charge him to announce in Europe that the ap- 
pointed hour had come. Furnished with letters from 
the patriarch, Peter straightway embarked for Rome 
to obtain Urban's sanction for his design. Urban 
listened and gave a consent which he could not pru- 
dently have withheld, but he abstained from partici- 
pating in the propaganda. In March, 1095, Urban 
called a Council at Piacenza, nominally to consider 
the deliverance of Jerusalem, and this Council was 
attended by thirty thousand impatient laymen, only 
waiting for the word to take the vow, but the pope did 
nothing. Even at Clermont eight months later, he 
showed a disposition to deal with private war, or 
church discipline, or with anything in fact rather than 
with the one engrossing question of the day, but this 
time there was no escape. A vast multitude of de- 
termined men filled not only Clermont but the adja- 
cent towns and villages, even sleeping in the fields, al- 



120 PREFACE. 

though the weather was bitterly cold, who demanded 
to know the poHcy of the Church. Urban seems to 
have procrastinated as long as he safely could, but, at 
length, at the tenth session, he produced Peter on the 
platform, clad as a pilgrim, and, after Peter had spoken^ 
he proclaimed the war. Urban declined, however, to 
command the army. The only effective force which 
marched was a body of laymen, organized and led by 
laymen, who in 1099 carried Jerusalem by an ordinary 
assault. In Jerusalem they found the cross and the 
sepulchre, and with these relics as the foundation of 
their power, the laity began an experiment which lasted 
eighty -eight years, ending in 1187 with the battle of 
Tiberias. At Tiberias the infidels defeated the Chris- 
tians, captured their king and their cross, and shortly 
afterward seized the tomb. 

If the eleventh-century mind had been as rigid as 
the Roman mind of the first century, mediaeval civiliza- 
tion could hardly, after the collapse of the crusades, 
have failed to degenerate as Roman civilization de- 
generated after the defeat of Varus. Being more elas- 
tic, it began, under an increased tension, to develop 
new phases of thought. The effort was indeed prodi- 
gious and the absolute movement possibly slow, but a 
change of intellectual attitude may be detected almost 
contemporaneously with the fall of the Latin kingdom 
in Palestine. It is doubtless true that the thirteenth 
century was the century in which imaginative thought 
reached its highest brilliancy, when Albertus Magnus 
and Saint Thomas Aquinas taught, when Saint Fran- 



PREFA CE. 121 

cis and Saint Clara lived, and when Thomas of Celano 
wrote the Dies Ires. It was then that Gothic architec- 
ture touched its climax in the cathedrals of Chartres 
and Amiens, of Bourges and of Paris; it was then also 
that Blanche of Castile ruled in France and that 
Saint Louis bought the crown of thorns, but it is 
equally true that the death of Saint Louis occurred 
in 1270, shortly after the thorough organization of the 
Inquisition by Innocent IV in 1252, and within two 
years or so of the production by Roger Bacon of his 
Opus Majus. 

The establishment of the Inquisition is decisive, be- 
cause it proves that sceptical thought had been spread 
far enough to goad the Church to general and system- 
atic repression, while the Opus Majus is a scientific 
exposition of the method by which the sceptical mind 
is trained. 

Roger Bacon was bom about 1214, and going early 
to Oxford fell under the influence of the most liberal 
teachers in Europe, at whose head stood Robert 
Grosseteste, aftenvard Bishop of Lincoln. Bacon con- 
ceived a veneration for Grosseteste, and even for 
Adam de Marisco his disciple, and turning toward 
mathematics rather than toward metaphysics he ea- 
gerly applied himself, when he went to Paris, to astrol- 
ogy and alchemy, which were the progenitors of the 
modem exact sciences. In the thirteenth century a 
young man like Bacon could hardly stand alone, and 
Bacon joined the Franciscans, but before many years 
elapsed he embroiled himself with his superiors. His 



122 PREFA CE. 

friend, Grosseteste, died in 1253, the year after In- 
nocent IV issued the bull Ad extirpanda estabhshing 
the Inquisition, and Bacon felt the consequences. 
The general of his order, Saint Bonaventura, with- 
drew him from Oxford where he was prominent, and 
immured him in a Parisian convent, treating him rig- 
orously, as Bacon intimated to Pope Clement IV. 
There he remained, silenced, for some ten years, until 
the election of Clement IV, in 1265. Bacon at once 
wrote to Clement complaining of his imprisonment, 
and deploring to the pope the plight into which sci- 
entific education had fallen. The pope replied direct- 
ing Bacon to explain his views in a treatise, but did 
not order his release. In response Bacon composed 
the Opus Majus. 

The Opus Majus deals among other things with ex- 
perimental science, and in the introductory chapter to 
the sixth part Bacon stated the theory of inductive 
thought quite as lucidly as did Francis Bacon three 
and a half centuries later in the Novum Organum.^ 

Clement died in 1268. The papacy remained vacant 
for a couple of years, but in 1271 Gregory X came in 

^ Positis radicibus sapientiae Latinorum penes Linguas et Math- 
ematicam et Perspectivam, nunc volo revolvere radices a parte Sci- 
entiae Experimentalis, quia sine experientia nihil sufficienter 
scire protest. Duo enim sunt modi cognoscendi, scilicet per argu- 
mentum et experimentum. Argumentum concludit et facit nos 
concedere conclusionem, sed non certificat neque removet dubita- 
tionem ut quiescat animus in intuitu veritatis, nisi eam inveniat via 
experlentiae; quia multi habent argumenta ad scibilia, sed quia non 
habent experientiam, negligunt ea, nee vitant nociva nex perse- 
quuntue bona. J. H. Bridges, The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon (Ox- 
ford, 1897), u, 167. 



PREFACE. 123 

on a conservative reaction. Bacon passed most of the 
rest of his Hfe in prison, perhaps through his own un- 
governable temper, and ostensibly his writings seem to 
liave had h'ttle or no effect on his contemporaries, yet 
it is certain that he was not an isolated specimen of a 
type of intelligence which suddenly bloomed during 
the Reformation. Bacon constantly spoke of his 
friends, but his friends evidently did not share his tem- 
perament. 'The scientific man has seldom relished 
martyrdom, and Galileo's experience as late as 1633 
shows what risks men of science ran who even indirectly 
attacked the vested interests of the Church. After 
the middle of the thirteenth century the danger was 
real enough to account for any degree of secretiveness, 
and a striking case of this timidity is related by Bacon 
himself. No one knows even the name of the man 
to whom Bacon referred as "Master Peter," but ac- 
cording to Bacon, "Master Peter" was the greatest 
and most original genius of the age, only he shunned 
publicity. The " Dominus experimentorum, " as Bacon 
called him, lived in a safe retreat and devoted himself 
to mathematics, chemistry, and the mechanical arts 
with such success that. Bacon insisted, he could by his 
in\entions have aided Saint Louis in his crusade more 
than his whole army.^ Nor is this assertion altogether 
fantastic. Bacon understood the formula for gun- 
powder, and if Saint Louis had been provided with 
even a poor explosive he might have taken Cairo; not 
to speak of the terror which Greek fire always inspired. 
' Emilc Charles, Roger Bacon. Sa vie et ses outrages, 17. 



124 PREFACE. 

Saint Louis met his decisive defeat in a naval battle 
fought in 1250, for the command of the Nile, by which 
he drew supplies from Damietta, and he met it, ac- 
cording to Matthew Paris, because his ships could not 
withstand Greek fire. Gunpowder, even in a very- 
simple form, might have changed the fate of the war. 

Scepticism touching the value of relics as a means 
for controlling nature was an efiFect of experiment, and, 
logically enough, scepticism advanced fastest among 
certain ecclesiastics who dealt in relics. For example, 
in 1248 Saint Louis undertook to invade Egypt in de- 
fence of the cross. Possibly Saint Louis may have 
been affected by economic considerations also touching 
the eastern trade, but his ostensible object was a cru- 
sade. The risk was very great, the cost enormous, and 
the responsibility the king assumed of the most serious 
kind. Nothing that he could do was left undone to en- 
sure success. In 1249 he captured Damietta, and then 
stood in need of every pound of money and of every 
man that Christendom could raise; yet at this crisis the 
Church thought chiefly of making what it could in 
cash out of the war, the inference being that the hier- 
archy suspected that even if Saint Louis prevailed and 
occupied Jerusalem, little would be gained from an ec- 
clesiastical standpoint. At all events, Matthew Paris 
has left an account, in his chronicle of the year 1249, 
of how the pope and the Franciscans preached this 
crusade, which is one of the most suggestive passages 
in thirteenth-century literature: 

"About the same time, by command of the pope, 



PREFACE. 125 

whom they obeyed impHcitly, the Preacher and Minor- 
ite brethren diligently employed themselves in preach- 
ing; and to increase the devotion of the Christians, they 
went with great solemnity to the places where their 
preaching was previously indicated, and granted many 
days of indulgence to those who came to hear them. . . . 
Preaching on behalf of the cross, they bestowed that 
symbol on people of every age, sex and rank, whatever 
their property or worth, and even on sick men and 
women, and those who were deprived of strength by 
sickness or old age; and on the next day, or even di- 
rectly afterwards, receiving it back from them, they 
absolved them from their vow of pilgrimage, for what- 
ever sum they could obtain for the favour. What 
seemed unsuitable and absurd was, that not many days 
afterwards. Earl Richard collected all this money in 
his treasury, by the agency of Master Bernard, an 
Italian clerk, who gathered in the fruit; whereby no 
slight scandal arose in the Church of God, and amongst 
the people in general, and the devotion of the faithful 
evidently cooled." ^ 

When tlie unfortunate Baldwin 11 became Emperor 
of the East in 1237, the relics of the passion were his 
best asset. In 1238, while Baldwin was in France try- 
ing to obtain aid, the French barons who carried on 
the government at Constantinople in his absence were 
obliged to pledge the crown of thorns to an Italian 
syndicate for 13,134 perpera, which Gibbon conjectures 

* Matthew Paris, English History, translated by the Rev. J. A. 
Giles, u, 309. 



126 PREFACE. 

to have been besants. Baldwin was notified of the 
pledge and urged to arrange for its redemption. He 
met with no difficulty. He confidently addressed him- 
self to Saint Louis and Queen Blanche, and "Although 
the king felt keen displeasure at the deplorable condi- 
tion of Constantinople, he was well pleased, neverthe- 
less, with the opportunity of adorning France with the 
richest and most precious treasure in all Christendom." 
More especially with "a relic, and a sacred object 
which was not on the commercial market." ^ 

Louis, beside paying the loan and the cost of transpor- 
tation which came to two thousand French pounds (the 
mark being then coined into £2, 15 sous and 6 pence), 
made Baldwin a present of ten thousand pounds for 
acting as broker. Baldwin was so well contented with 
this sale which he closed in 1239, that a couple of years 
later he sent to Paris all the contents of his private 
chapel which had any value. Part of the treasure was 
a fragment of what purported to be the cross, but the 
authenticity of this relic was doubtful; there was be- 
side, however, tlie baby linen, the spear-head, the 
sponge, and the chain, beside several miscellaneous 
articles like the rod of Moses. 

Louis built the Sainte Chapelle at a cost of twenty 
thousand marks as a shrine in which to deposit them. 
The Sainte Chapelle has usually ranked as the most 
absolutely perfect specimen of mediaeval religious archi- 
tecture.^ 

^ Du Cange, Histoire de Vem.'pire de Constantinople sous les em- 
pereurs Fran^ais, edition de Buchon, i, 259. 

2 On this whole subject of the inter-relation of mediaeval theology 



PREFACE. 127 

When Saint Louis bought the Crown of Thorns from 
Baldwin in 1239, the commercial value of relics may, 
possibly, be said to have touched its highest point, but, 
in fact, the adoration of them had culminated with the 
collapse of the Second Crusade, and in another century 
and a half the market had decisively broken and the 
Reformation had already begun, with the advent of 
Wycliffe and the outbreak of Wat Tyler's Rebellion in 
1381. For these social movements have always a 
common cause and reach a predetermined result. 

In the eleventh century the convent of Cluny, for 
example, had an enormous and a perfectly justified 
hold upon the popular imagination, because of the 
sanctity and unselfishness of its abbots. Saint Hugh 
won his sainthood by a self-denial and effort which 
were impossible to ordinary men, but with Louis IX 
the penitential life had already lost its attractions and 
men like Arnold rapidly brought religion and religious 
thought into contempt. The famous Grosseteste, 
Bishop of Lincoln, born, probably, in 1175, died in 1253. 
He presided over the diocese of Lincoln at the precise 
moment when Saint Louis was building the Sainte Cha- 
pelle, but Grosseteste in 1250 denounced in a sermon 
at Lyons the scandals of the papal court with a ferocity 
which hardly was surpassed at any later day. 

To attempt even an abstract of the thought of the 
English Reformation would lead too far, however fas- 

with architecture and philosophy the reader is referred to Mont- 
Saint-Michel et Ckartres, by Henry Adams, which is the most phil- 
osophical and thorough exposition of this subject which ever has 
been attempted. 



128 PREFACE. 

cinating the subject might be. It must suffice to say 
briefly that theology had httle or nothing to do with it. 
Wycliflfe denounced the friars as lazy, profligate im- 
postors, who wrung money from the poor which they 
afterwards squandered in ways offensive to God, and 
he would have stultified himself had he admitted, in 
the same breath, that these reprobates, when united, 
formed a divinely illuminated corporation, each mem- 
ber of which could and did work innumerable miracles 
through the interposition of Christ. Ordinary mir- 
acles, indeed, could be tested by the senses, but the es- 
sence of transubstantiation was that it eluded the 
senses. Thus nothing could be more convenient to 
the government than to make this invisible and in- 
tangible necromancy a test in capital cases for heresy- 
Hence Wyclifle had no alternative but to deny tran- 
substantiation, for nothing could be more insulting to 
the intelligence than to adore a morsel of bread which 
a priest held in his hand. The pretension of the priests 
to make the flesh of Christ was, according to Wycliffe, 
an impudent fraud, and their pretension to possess this 
power was only an excuse by which they enforced their 
claim to collect fees, and what amounted to extor- 
tionate taxes, from the people.^ But, in the main, 
no dogma, however incomprehensible, ever troubled 
Protestants, as a class. They easily accepted the Trin- 
ity, the double procession, or the Holy Ghost itself, 
though no one had the slightest notion what the Holy 

' Nowhere, perhaps, does Wycliffe express himself more strongly 
on this subject than in a little tract called The Wicket, written in 
English, which he issued for popular consumption about this time. 



PREFACE. 129 

Ghost miglit be. WycIifTe roundly declared in the 
first paragraph of his confession ^ that the body of Christ 
which was crucified was truly and really in the conse- 
crated host, and Huss, who inherited the Wyclifiian 
tradition, answered before the Council of Constance, 
" Verily, I do think that the body of Christ is really and 
totally in the sacrament of the altar, which was born 
of the Virgin Mary, suffered, died, and rose again, and 
sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty." ^ 
That which has rent society in twain and has caused 
blood to flow like water, has never been abstract opin- 
ions, but that economic competition either between 
states or classes, that lust for power and wealth, which 
makes a vested interest. Thus by 1382 the eucharist 
had come to represent to the privileged classes power 
and wealth, and they would have repudiated Wycliffe 
even had they felt strong enough to support him. But 
they were threatened by an adversary equally formida- 
ble with heresy in the person of the villeins whom 
the constantly increasing momentum of the time had 
raised into a position in which they undertook to com- 
pete for the ownership of the land which they still 
tilled as technical serfs. 

^ Fasciculi Zizaniorum, 115. 

^ Foxe, Acts and Monuments, in, 452. 



CHAPTER III. 

Now the courts may say what they will in support of 
the vested interests, for to support vested interests is 
what lawyers are paid for and what courts are made for. 
Only, unhappily, in the process of argument courts 
and lawyers have caused blood to flow copiously, for in 
spite of all that can be said to the contrary, men have 
practically proved that they do own all the property 
they can defend, all the courts in Christendom not- 
withstanding, and this is an issue of physical force and 
not at all of words or of parchments. And so it proved 
to be in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
turies, alike in Church and State. It was a matter 
of rather slow development. After the conquest vil- 
leins could neither in fact nor theory acquire or hold 
property as against their lord, and the class of land- 
lords stretched upwards from the owner of a knight's 
fee to the king on his throne, who was the chief landlord 
of all, but by so narrow a margin that he often had 
enough to do to maintain some vestige of sovereignty. 
So, to help himself, it came to pass that the king 
intrigued with the serfs against their restive masters, 
and the abler the king, the more he intrigued, like 
Henry I, until the villeins gained very substantial ad- 
vantages. Thus it was that toward 1215, or pretty 
nearly contemporaneously with the epoch when men 
like Grosseteste began to show restlessness under the 



PRE FA CE. 131 

extortionate corruption of the Church, the villein was 
discovered to be able to defend his claim to some 
portion of the increment in the value of the land which 
he tilled and which was due to his labor: and this title 
the manorial courts recognized, because they could not 
help it, as a sort of tenant right, calling it a customary 
tenancy by base service. A century later these serv- 
ices in kind had been pretty frequently commuted into 
a fixed rent paid in money, and the serf had become 
a freeman, and a rather formidable freeman, too. For 
it was largely from among these technical serfs that 
Edward III recruited the infantry who formed his line 
at Crecy in 1346, and the archers of Crecy were not 
exactly the sort of men who take kindly to eviction, to 
say nothing of slavery. As no one meddled much with 
the villeins before 1349, all went well until after Crecy, 
but in 1348 the Black Death ravaged England, and so 
many laborers died that the cost of farming property by 
hired hands exceeded the value of the rent which the 
villeins paid. Then the landlords, under the usual re- 
actionary and dangerous legal advice, tried coercion. 
Their first experiment was the famous Statute of Labor- 
ers, which fixed wages at the rates which prevailed in 
1347, but as this statute accomplished nothing the 
landlords repudiated their contracts, and undertook 
to force their villeins to render their ancient customary 
services. Though the lay landlords were often hard 
masters, the ecclesiastics, especially the monks, were 
harder still, and the ecclesiastics were served by law- 
yers of their own cloth, whose sharp practice became 



132 PREFACE. 

proverbial. Thus the law declined to recognize rights 
in property existing in fact, with the inevitable result 
of the peasant rising in 1381, known as Wat Tyler's 
Rebellion. Popular rage perfectly logically ran high- 
est against the monks and the lawyers. Both the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon de Sudbury, the 
Lord Chancellor, and the Chief Justice were killed, and 
the insurgents wished to kill, as Capgrave has related, 
"all the men that had learned ony law," Finally the 
rebellion was suppressed, chiefly by the duplicity of 
Richard II. Richard promised the people, by written 
charters, a permanent tenure as freemen at reasonable 
rents, and so induced them to go home with his char- 
ters in their hands; but they were no sooner gone than 
vengeance began. Though Richard had been at the 
peasants' mercy, who might have killed him had they 
wished, punitive expeditions were sent in various direc- 
tions. One was led by Richard himself, who travelled 
with Tresilian, the new Chief Justice, the man who 
afterward was himself hanged at Tyburn. Tresilian 
worked so well that he is said to have strung up a dozen 
villeins to a single beam in Chelmsford because he had 
no time to have them executed regularly. Stubbs has 
estimated that seven thousand victims hardly satis- 
fied the landlords' sense of outraged justice. What con- 
cerns us, chiefly, is that this repression, however savage, 
failed altogether to bring tranquillity. After 1381 a 
full century of social chaos supervened, merging at 
times into actual civil war, until, in 1485, Henry Tudor 
came in after his victory at Bosworth, pledged to de- 



PREFACE. 133 

stroy the whole reactionary class which incarnated 
feudalism. For the feudal soldier was neither flexible 
nor astute, and allowed himself to be caught between 
the upper and the nether millstone. While industrial 
and commercial capital had been increasing in the 
towns, capitalistic methods of farming had invaded the 
country, and, as police improved, private and preda- 
tory warfare, as a business, could no longer be made to 
pay. The importance of a feudal noble lay in the body 
of retainers who followed his banner, and therefore the 
feudal tendency always was to overcharge the estate 
with military expenditure. Hence, to protect them- 
selves from creditors, the landlords passed the Statute 
De Bonis ^ which made entails inalienable. Toward 
the end of the Wars of the Roses, however, the pressure 
for money, which could only be raised by pledging 
their land, became too strong for the feudal aristocracy. 
Edward IV, who was a very able man, perceived, pretty 
early in his reign, that his class could not maintain 
themselves unless their land were put upon a commer- 
cial basis. Therefore he encouraged the judges, in 
the collusive litigation known to us as Taltarum's Case, 
decided in 1472, to set aside the Statute De Donis, by 
the fiction of the Common Recovery. The concession, 
even so, came too late. The combination against them 
had growTi too strong for the soldiers to resist. Other 
classes evolved by competition wanted their property, 
and these made Henry Tudor king of England to seize 
it for them. 

1 13 Edw. I, c. 1 (a.d. 1284). 



134 PREFACE. 

Henry's work was simple enough. After Bosworth, 
with a competent pohce force at hand to execute proc- 
ess, he had only to organize a political court, and to 
ruin by confiscatory fines all the families strong 
enough, or rash enough, to maintain garrisoned 
houses. So Henry remodelled the Star Chamber, in 
1486,^ to deal with the martial gentry, and before long 
a new type of intelligence possessed the kingdom. 

The feudal soldiers being disposed of, it remained to 
evict the monks, who were thus left without their 
natural defenders. No matter of faith was involved. 
Henry VIII boasted that in doctrine he was as ortho- 
dox as the pope. There was, however, an enormous 
monastic landed property to be redistributed This 
was confiscated, and appropriated, not to public pur- 
poses, but, as usually happens in revolutions, to the 
use of the astutest of the revolutionists. Among these, 
John Russell, afterward Earl of Bedford, stood pre- 
eminent, Russell had no particular pedigree or genius, 
save the acquisitive genius, but he made himself useful 
to Henry in such judicial murders as that of Richard 
Whiting, Abbot of Glastonbury. He received in pay- 
ment, among much else, Woburn Abbey, which has 
since remained the Bedford country seat, and Covent 
Garden or Convent Garden, one of the most valuable 
parcels of real estate in London. Covent Garden the 
present duke recently sold, anticipating, perhaps, some 
such legislation as ruined the monks and made his 
ancestor's fortune. As for the monks whom Henry 
1 3 Henry 7, C 1. 






] 



PREFACE. 135 

CN-icted, they wandered forth from their homes beg- 
gars, and Henry hanged all of them whom he could 
catch as vagrants. How many perished as counter- 
poise for the peasant massacres and Lollard burnings 
of the foregoing two centuries can never be kno^Aoi, 
nor to us is it material. What is essential to mark, 
from the legal standpoint, is that while this long and 
bloody revolution, of one hundred and fifty j^ears, 
displaced a favored class and confiscated its property, 
it raised up in their stead another class of land mo- 
nopolists, rather more greedy and certainly quite as 
cruel as those whom they superseded. Also, in spite 
of all opposition, labor did make good its claim to par- 
ticipate more or less fully in the owTiership of the prop- 
erty it cultivated, for while the holding of the ancient 
villein grew to be well recognized in the royal courts 
as a copyhold estate, villeinage itself disappeared. 

Yet, unless I profoundly err, in the revolution of the 
sixteenth century, the law somewhat conspicuously 
failed in its function of moderating competition, for I 
am persuaded that competition of another kind sharp- 
ened, and shortly caused a second civil war bloodier 
than the \Yars of the Roses. 

Fifteen years before the convents were seized, Sir 
Thomas More wrote Utopia, in whose opening chapter 
More has given an account of a dinner at Cardinal 
Morton's, who, by the way, presided in the Star 
Chamber. At this dinner one of the cardinal's guests 
reflected on the thievish propensities of Englishmen, 
who were to be found throughout the country hanged 



136 PREFACE. 

as felons, sometimes twenty together on a single 
gallows. More protested that this was not the fault 
of the poor who were hanged, but of rich land mo- 
nopolists, who pastured sheep and left no fields for 
tillage. According to More, these capitalists plucked 
down houses and even towns, leaving nothing but the 
church for a sheep-house, so that "by covin and fraud, 
or by violent oppression, ... or by wrongs and in- 
juries," the husbandmen "be thrust out of their own," 
and, "must needs depart away, poor, wretched souls, 
men, women, husbands, wives, fatherless children, 
widows." The dissolution of the convents accelerated 
the process, and more and more of the weaker yeo- 
manry were ruined and evicted. It is demonstrated 
that the pauperization of the feebler rural population 
went on apace by the passage of poor-laws under Eliza- 
beth, which, in the Middle Ages, had not been needed 
and, therefore, were unknown. This movement, de- 
scribed by More, was the beginning of the system of 
enclosing common lands which afterward wrought 
havoc among the English yeomen, and which, I sup- 
pose, contributed more than any other single cause to 
the Great Rebellion of the seventeenth century. In 
the mediaeval village the owners of small farms en- 
joyed certain rights in the common land of the com- 
munity, affording them pasturage for their cattle and 
the like, rights without which small farming could not 
be made profitable. These commons the land monop- 
olists appropriated, sometimes giving some shadow 
of compensation, sometimes by undisguised force, but 



PREFA CE. 137 

on the whole compensation amounted to so little that 
the enclosure of the commons must rank as confisca- 
tion. Also this seizure of property would doubtless 
have caused a convulsion as lasting as that which fol- 
lowed the insurrection of 1381, or as did actually occur 
in Ireland, had it not been for an unparalleled con- 
temporaneous territorial and industrial expansion. 
Thorold Rogers always insisted that between 1563, the 
year of the passage of the Statute of Apprentices, ^ and 
18'24, a regular conspiracy existed between the law- 
yers "and the parties interested in its success . . . 
to cheat the English workman of his wages, . . . and 
to degrade him to irremediable poverty," ^ Certainly 
the land monopolists resorted to strong measures to 
accumulate land, for something like six hundred and 
fifty Enclosure Acts were passed between 1760, the 
opening of the Industrial Revolution, and 1774, the 
outbreak of the American War. But without insist- 
ing on Rogers's view, it is not denied that the weakest 
of the small yeomen sank into utter misery, becoming 
paupers or worse. On the other hand, of those stronger 
some emigrated to America, others, who were among 
the ablest and the boldest, sought fortune as adven- 
turers over the whole earth, and, like the grand- 
father of Chatham, brought home from India as smug- 
glers or even as pirates, diamonds to be sold to kings 
for their crowns, or, like Clive, became the greatest 
generals and administrators of the nation. Probably, 
however, by far the majority of those who were of 
^ 5 Eliz. c. 4. 2 Work and Wages, 398. 



138 PREFACE. 

average capacity found compensation for the confis- 
cated commons in domestic industry, owning their 
houses with lots of land and the tools of their trade. 
Defoe has left a charming description of the region 
about Halifax in Yorkshire, toward the year 1730, 
where he found the whole population busy, prosperous, 
healthy, and, in the main, self-sufficing. He did not 
see a beggar or an idle person in the whole country. 
So, favored by circumstances, the landed oligarchy met 
with no effective resistance after the death of Crom- 
well, and achieved what amounted to being autocratic 
power in 1688. Their great triumph was the conver- 
sion of the House of Commons into their own personal 
property, about the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, with all the guaranties of law. In the Middle 
Ages the chief towns of England had been summoned 
by the king to send burgesses to Westminster to grant 
him money, but as time elapsed the Commons ac- 
quired influence and, in 1642, became dominant. 
Then, after the Restoration, the landlords conceived 
the idea of appropriating the right of representation, 
as they had appropriated and were appropriating the 
common lands. Lord John Russell one day observed 
in the House of Commons that the burgesses were 
originally chosen from among the inhabitants of the 
towns they represented, but that, in the reign of Anne, 
the landlords, to depress the shipping interest, opened 
the borough representation to all qualified persons 
without regard to domicile.^ Lord John was mistaken 
^ 36 Hansard, Third Series, 548. 



PREFACE. 139 

in his date, for the change occurred earlier, but he de-'- 
scribed correctly enough the persistent animus of the 
landlords. An important part of their policy turned 
on the so-called Determination Acts of 1696 and 1729, 
which defined the franchises and which had the effect 
of confirming the titles of patrons to borough property,^ 
thus making a seat in the House of Commons an incor- 
poreal hereditament fully recognized by law. On this 
point so high an authority as Lord Eldon was em- 
phatic. ^ By the time of the American War the oli- 
garchy had become so narrow that one hundred and 
fifty -four peers and commoners returned three hundred 
and seven members, or much more than a majority of 
the House as then organized.^ With the privileged class 
reduced to these contemptible numbers a catastrophe 
necessarily followed. Almost impregnable as the posi- 
tion of the oligarchy appeared, it yet had its vulner- 
able point. As Burke told the Duke of Portland, a 
duke's power did not come from his title, but from his 
wealth, and the landlords' wealth rested on their ability 
to draw a double rent from their estates, one rent for 
themselves, and another to provide for the farmer to 
whom they let their acres. Evidently British land could 
not bear this burden if brought in competition with 
other equally good land that paid only a single rent, 
and from a pretty early period the landlords appear to 
have been alive to this fact. Nevertheless, ocean 
freights afforded a fair protection, and as long as the 

' Porritt, Unreformcd House of Commons, i, 9, et seq. 

2 12 Hansard, Third Series, 396. 

3 Grey's motion for Reform, 30 Pari. Hist. 795 (a.d. 1793). 



140 PREFACE. 

industrial population remained tolerably self-support- 
ing, England rather tended to export than to import 
grain. But toward 1760 advances in applied science 
profoundly modified the equilibrium of English so- 
ciety. The new inventions, stimulated by steam, 
could only be utilized by costly machinery installed 
in large factories, which none but considerable capi- 
talists could build, but once in operation the product 
of these factories undersold domestic labor, and ruined 
and evicted the population of whole regions like Hali- 
fax. These unfortunate laborers were thrust in abject 
destitution into filthy and dark alleys in cities, where 
they herded in masses, in misery and crime. In con- 
sequence grain rose in value, so much so that in 
1766 prayers were offered touching its price. Thence- 
forward England imported largely from America, and 
in 1773 Parliament was constrained to reduce the 
duty on wheat to a point lower than the gentry 
conceded again, until the total repeal of the Corn 
Laws in 1846.^ The situation was well understood in 
London. Burke, Governor Pownall, and others ex- 
plained it in Parliament, while Chatham implored 
the landlords not to alienate America, which they 
could not, he told them, conquer, but which gave 
them a necessary market, — a market as he aptly 
said, both of supply and demand. And Chatham 
was right, for America not only supplied the grain to 
feed English labor, but bought from England at least 
one third of all her surplus manufactures. 

1 John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden, 167, note 5. 



PREFACE. 141 

This brings us to the eighteenth century, which di- Xs 
rectly concerns us, because the religious superstition, 
which had previously caused men to seek in a conscious 
supreme energy the effective motor in human affairs, 
had waned, and the problem presented was reduced 
to the operation of that acceleration of movement by 
the progress of applied science which always has been, 
and always must be, the prime cause of the quickening 
of economic competition either as between communi- 
ties or as between individuals. And this is the capital 
phenomenon of civilization. For it is now generally 
admitted that war is nothing but economic competition 
in its acutest form. When competition reaches a cer- 
tain intensity it kindles into war or revolution, pre- 
cisely as when iron is raised to a certain heat it kindles 
into flame. And, for the purjioses of illustration, pos- 
sibly the best method of showing how competition was 
quickened, and how it affected adjacent communities 
during the eighteenth century, is to take navigation, 
not only because navigation was much improved dur- 
ing the first three quarters of that period, but because 
both England and France competed for control in 
America by means of ships. It suffices to mention, 
very succinctly, a few of the more salient advances 
which were then made. 

Toward 1761 John Harrison produced the chronom- 
eter, by which longitude could be determined at sea, 
making the ship independent in all parts of the world. 
At the same time more ingenious rigging increased her 
power of working to windward. With such advantages 



142 PREFACE. 

^Captain Cook became a mighty discoverer both in the 
southern and western oceans, charted New Zealand 
and much else, and more important than all, in 1759 he 
surveyed the Saint Lawrence and piloted ships up the 
river, of which he had established the channel. Speak- 
ing of Cook naturally leads to the solution of the prob- 
lem of the transportation of men, sailors, soldiers, and 
emigrants, on long voyages, thereby making popula- 
tion fluid. Cook, in his famous report, read before the 
Royal Society in March, 1776, after his second voyage, 
established forever the hygienic principles by observ- 
ing which a ship's company may safely be kept at sea 
for any length of time. Previously there had always 
been a very high mortality from scurvy and kindred 
diseases, which had, of course, operated as a very 
serious check to human movement. On land the same 
class of phenomena were even more marked. In Eng- 
land the Industrial Revolution is usually held to date 
from 1760, and, by common consent, the Industrial 
Revolution is attributed altogether to applied science, 
or, in other words, to mechanical inventions. In 1760 
the flying-shuttle appeared, and coal began to replace 
wood for smelting. In 1764 Hargreaves invented the 
spinning-jenny; in 1779 Crompton contrived the mule; 
and in 1768 Watt brought the steam-engine to matu- 
rity. In 1761 the first boat-load of coals sailed over 
the Barton viaduct, which James Brindley built for the 
Duke of Bridge water's canal, to connect Worsley with 
Manchester, thus laying the foundation of British in- 
land navigation, which before the end of the century 



PREFACE. 143 

had covered England; while John Metcalf, the blind 
roadbuilder, began his lifework in 1765. He was des- 
tined to improve English highways, which up to that 
time had been mostly impossible for wheeled traffic. 
In France the same advance went on. Arthur Young 
described the impression made on him in 1789 by the 
magnificence of the French roads which had been built 
since the administration of Colbert, as well as by the 
canal which connected the Mediterranean with the 
Atlantic. 

In the midst of this activity Washington grew up. 
Washington was a born soldier, engineer, and surveyor 
with the topographical instinct peculiar to that temper- 
ament. As early as 1748 he was chosen by Lord Fair- 
fax, who recognized his ability, though only sixteen 
years old, to survey his vast estate west of the Blue 
Ridge, which was then a wilderness. He spent three 
years in this work and did it well. In 1753 Governor 
Dinwiddle sent Washington on a mission to the French 
commander on the Ohio, to warn him to cease tres- 
passing on English territory, a mission which Wash- 
ington fulfilled, under considerable hardship and some 
peril, with eminent success. Thus early, for he was 
then only twenty-two, Washington gained that 
thorough understanding of the North American river 
system which enabled him, many years afterward, to 
construct the Republic of the United States upon the 
lines of least resistant intercommunication. And 
Washington's conception of the problem and his 
solution thereof were, in substance, this: 



>f 



144 PREFACE. 

The American continent, west of the mountains and 
south of the Great Lakes, is traversed in all directions 
by the Mississippi and its tributaries, but we may con- 
fine our attention to two systems of watercourses, the 
one to the west, forming by the Wisconsin and the 
main arm of the Mississippi, a thoroughfare from Lake 
Michigan to the Gulf; and the other by French Creek 
and the Allegheny, broken only by one easy portage, 
affording a perfect means of access to the Ohio, a river 
which has always operated as the line of cleavage be- 
tween our northern and southern States. The French 
starting from Quebec floated from Lake Erie down 
the Allegheny to Pittsburgh, the English ascended 
the Potomac to Cumberland, and thence, following 
the most practicable watercourses, advanced on the 
French position at the junction of the Allegheny and 
the Monongahela. There Washington met and fought 
them in 1754, and ever after Washington maintained 
that the only method by which a stable rniion among 
the colonies could be secured was by a main trunk 
system of transportation along the line of the Ohio and 
the Potomac. This was to be his canal which should 
bind north and south, east and west, together by a com- 
mon interest, and which should carry the produce of 
the west, north, and south, to the Atlantic coast, where 
it should be discharged at the head of deep-water navi- 
gation, and which should thus stimulate industry ad- 
jacent to the spot he chose for the Federal City, or, in 
our language, for the City of Washington. Thus the 
capital of the United States was to become the capital 



PREFACE. 145 

of a true nation, not as a political compromise, but ' 
because it lay at the central point of a community made 
cohesive by a social circulation which should build it 
up, in his own words, into a capital, or national heart, if 
not "as large as London, yet of a magnitude inferior 
to few others in Europe." ^ Maryland and Virginia 
abounded, as Washington well knew, in coal and iron. 
His canal passing through this region would stimulate 
industry, and these States would thus become the focus 
of exchanges. Manufacturing is incompatible with 
slavery, hence slavery would gradually and peacefully 
disappear, and the extremities of the Union would be 
drawn together at what he described as "the great 
emporium of the United States." To crown all, a 
national university was to make this emporium power- 
ful in collective thought. 

Doubtless Grenville and Townshend had not con- 
sidered the American problem as maturely as had 
Washington, but nevertheless, most well-informed 
persons now agree that Englishmen in 1763 were quite 
alive to the advantages which would accrue to Great 
Britain, by holding in absolute control a rich but inco- 
herent body of colonies whose administrative centre 
lay in England, and were as anxious that London should 
serve as the heart of America as Washington was that 
America should have its heart on the Potomac. 

Accordingly, England attempted to isolate Massa- 
chusetts and pressed an attack on her with energy, be- 
fore the whole thirteen colonies should be able to draw 

1 Washington to Mrs. Fairfax, 16 May, 1798; Sparks, xi, 233. 



146 PREFACE. 

to a unity. On the other hand, Washington, and most 
sensible Americans, resisted this attack as resohitely 
as might be under such disadvantages, not wishing for 
independence, but hoping for some compromise Hke 
that which Great Britain has since effected with her 
remaining colonies. The situation, however, admitted 
of no peaceful adjustment, chiefly because the imbecil- 
ity of American administration induced by her inca- 
pacity for collective thought, was so manifest, that 
Englishmen could not believe that 'such a society could 
wage a successful war. Nor could America have done 
so alone. She owed her ultimate victory altogether to 
Washington and France. 

It would occupy too much space for me to undertake 
to analyze, even superficially, the process by which, 
after the Seven Years' War, competition between Amer- 
ica and England reached an intensity which kindled 
the American Revolution, but, shortly stated, the 
economic tension arose thus : As England was then or- 
ganized, the estates of the English landlords had to 
pay two rents, one to the landlord himself, the other to 
the farmer who leased his land, and this it could not 
do were it brought into direct competition with equally 
good land which paid but one profit, and which was not 
burdened by an excessive cost of transportation in 
reaching its market. As freights between England 
and America fell because of improved shipping and 
the greater safety of the seas, England had to have 
protection for her food and she proposed to get it thus : 
If competing Continental exports could be excluded 



PREFACE. 147 

from America, and, at the same time, Americans could 
be prevented from manufacturing for themselves, the 
colonists might be constrained to take what they 
needed from England, at prices which would enable 
labor to buy food at a rate which would yield the 
double profit, and thus America could be made to pay 
the cost of supporting the landlords. As Cobden 
afterward observed, the fortunes of England have 
turned on American competition. A part of these 
fortunes were represented by the Parliamentary bor- 
oughs w^iich the landlords owned and which were con- 
fiscated by the Reform Bill, and these boroughs were 
held by Lord Eldon to be incorporeal hereditaments: 
as truly a part of the private property of the gentry 
who owned them as church advowsons, or the like. 
And the gentry held to their law-making power which 
gave them such a privilege with a tenacity which pre- 
cipitated two wars before they yielded; but this was 
naught compared to the social convulsion which rent 
France, when a population which had been for centuries 
restrained from free domestic movement, burst its 
bonds and insisted on levelling the barriers w^hich had 
immobilized it. 

The story of the French Revolution is too familiar 
to need recapitulation here : indeed, I have already dealt 
with it in my Social Revolutions; but the effects of that 
convulsion are only now beginning to appear, and these 
effects, without the shadow of a doubt, have been in 
their ultimate development the occasion of that great 
war whose conclusion we still await. 



148 PREFACE. 

France, in 1792, having passed into a revolution 
which threatened the vested interests of Prussia, was 
attacked by Prussia, who was defeated at Valmy. 
Presently, France retaliated, under Napoleon, in- 
vaded Prussia, crushed her army at Jena, in 1807, dis- 
membered the kingdom and imposed on her many 
hardships. To obtain their freedom the Prussians 
found it needful to reorganize their social system from 
top to bottom, for this social system had descended 
from Frederic William, the Great Elector of Branden- 
burg (1640-1688), and from Frederic the Great (1740- 
1786), and was effete and incapable of meeting the 
French onset, which amounted, in substance, to a 
quickened competition. Accordingly, the new Prus- 
*' sian constitution, conceived by Stein, put the com- 
munity upon a relatively democratic and highly devel- 
oped educational basis. By the Emancipating Edict 
of 1807, the peasantry came into possession of their 
land, while, chiefly through the impulsion of Scharn- 
horst, who was the first chief of staff of the modern army, 
the country adopted universal military service, which 
proved to be popular throughout all ranks. Previous 
to Scharnhorst, under Frederic the Great, the quali- 
fication of an officer had been birth. Scharnhorst de- 
fined it as education, gallantry, and intelligence. Simi- 
larly, Gneisenau's conception of a possible Prussian 
supremacy lay in its army, its science, and its adminis- 
tration. But the civil service was intended to incar- 
nate science, and was the product of the modernized 
university, exemplified in the University of Berlin or- 



PREFACE. 149 

ganized by William von Humboldt. Herein lay the 
initial advantage which Germany gained over Eng- ' 
land, an advantage which she long maintained. And 
the advantage lay in this: Germany conceived a sys- 
tem of technical education matured and put in opera- 
tion by the State. Hence, so far as in human affairs 
such things are possible, the intelligence of Germans 
was liberated from the incubus of vested interests, who 
always seek to use education to advance themselves. 
It was so in England. The English entrusted educa- 
tion to the Church, and the Church was, bj^ the neces- 
sity of its being, reactionary and hostile to science, 
whereas the army, in the main, was treated in England 
as a social function, and the oflScers, speaking gener- 
ally, were not technically specially educated at all. 
Hence, in foreign countries, but especially in Ger- 
many which was destined to be ultimately England's 
great competitor, England laid herself open to rather 
more than a suspicion of weakness, and indeed, when 
it came to a test, England found herself standing, for 
several years of war, at a considerable disadvantage 
because of the lack of education in those departments 
wherein Germany had, by the attack of France, been 
forced to make herself proficient. This any one may 
see for himself by reading the addresses of Fichte to the 
German nation, delivered in 1807 and 1808, when Ber- 
lin was still occupied by the French. In fine, it was 
with Prussia a question of competition, brought to its 
ultimate tension by war. Prussia had no alternative 
as a conquered land but to radically accelerate her 



150 PREFACE. 

momentum, or perish. And so, at the present day, it 
may not improbably be with us. Competition must 
grow intenser. 

With England the situation in 1800 was very differ- 
ent. It was less strenuous. Nothing is more notable 
in England than to observe how, after the Industrial 
Revolution began, there was practically no means by 
which a poor man could get an education, save by edu- 
cating himself. For instance, in February 1815, four 
months before Waterloo, George Stephenson took out 
a patent for the locomotive engine which was to rev- 
olutionize the world. But George Stephenson was a 
common laborer in the mines, who had no state in- 
struction available, nor had he even any private insti- 
tution at hand in which the workmen whom he em- 
ployed in practical construction could be taught. He 
and his son Robert, had to organize instruction for 
themselves and their employees independently. So 
it was even with a man like Faraday, who began life 
as an errand boy, and later on who actually went 
abroad as a sort of valet to Sir Humphry Davy. 
Davy himself was a self-made man. In short, Eng- 
land, as a community, did little or nothing by educa- 
tion for those who had no means, and but little to draw 
any one toward science. It was at this precise moment 
that Germany was cast into the furnace of modern 
competition with England, who had, because of a 
series of causes, chiefly geographical, topographical, 
and mineralogical, about a century the start of her. 
Against this advantage Germany had to rely exclusively 



PREFACE. 151 

upon civil and military education. At first this com- 
petition by Germany took a military complexion, and 
very rapidly wrought the complete consolidation of 
Germany by the Austrian and the French wars. 
But this phase presently passed, and after the French 
campaign of 1870 the purely economic aspect of the 
situation developed more strenuously still, so much so 
that intelligent observers, among whom Lord Rob- 
erts was conspicuous, perceived quite early in the 
present century^ that the heat generated in the con- 
flict must, probably, soon engender war. Nor could 
it either theoretically or practically have been other- 
wise, for the relations between the two countries had 
reached a point where they generated a friction which 
caused incandescence automatically. And, moreover, 
the inflammable material fit for combustion was, es- 
pecially in Germany, present in quantity. From the 
time of Fichte and Scharnhorst dowmward to the end 
of the century, the whole nation had learned, as a sort 
of gospel, that the German education produced a most 
superior engine of economic competition, whereas the 
slack education and frivolous amusements of English 
civil and military life alike, had gradually created a 
society apt to crumble. And it is only needful for 
any person who has the curiosity, to glance at the light 
literature of the Victorian age, which deals with the 
army, to see how dominant a part such an amusement 
as hunting played in the life of the younger officers, 
especially in the fashionable regiments, to be impressed 
with the soundness of much of this German criticism. 



152 PREFACE. 

Assuming, then, for the sake of argument, that these 
historical premises are sound, I proceed to consider how 
they bear on our prospective civilization. 

This is eminently a scientific age, and yet the scien- 
tific mind, as it is now produced among us, is not with- 
out tendencies calculated to cause uneasiness to those 
a little conversant with history or philosophy. For 
whereas no one in these days would dream of utilizing 
prayer, as did Moses or Saint Hugh, as a mechanical 
energy, nevertheless the search for a universal prime 
motor goes on unabated, and yet it accomplishes 
nothing to the purpose. On the contrary, the effect 
is one which could neither be expected nor desired. 
Instead of being an aid to social coordination, it stimu- 
lates disintegration to a high degree as the war has 
shown. It has stimulated disintegration in two ways. 
First, it has enormously quickened physical movement, 
which has already been discussed, and secondly, it has 
stimulated the rapidity with which thought is diffused. 
The average human being can only absorb and assim- 
ilate safely new forms of thought when given enough 
time for digestion, as if he were assimilating food. If 
he be plied with new thought too rapidly he fails to 
digest. He has a surfeit, serious in proportion to its 
enormity. That is to say, his power of drawing cor- 
rect conclusions from the premises submitted to him 
fails, and we have all sorts of crude experiments in so- 
ciology attempted, which end in that form of chaos 
which we call a violent revolution. The ordinary re- 
sult is infinite waste fomented by fallacious hopes; in 



PREFACE. 153 

a word, financial disaster, supplemented usually by 
loss of life. The experience is an old one, and the re- 
sult is almost invariable. 

For example, during the Middle Ages, men like 
Saint Hugh and Peter the Venerable, and, most of all, 
Saint Francis, possessed by dreams of attaining to per- 
fection, by leading lives of inimitable purity, self-de- 
votion, and asceticism, inspired the community about 
them with the conviction that they could work miracles. 
They thereby, as a reward, drew to the Church they 
served what amounted to being, considering the age 
they lived in, boundless wealth. But the effect of this 
economic phenomenon was far from what they had 
hoped or expected. Instead of raising the moral 
standard of men to a point where all the world would 
be improved, they so debased the hierarchy, by making 
money the standard of ambition within it, that, as a 
whole, the priesthood accepted, without any effective 
protest, the fires of the Council of Constance which 
consumed Huss, and the abominations of the Borgias 
at Rome. Perfectly logically, as a corollary to this 
orgy of crime and bestiality, the wars of the Refor- 
mation swept away many, many thousands of human 
beings, wasted half of Europe, and only served to 
demonstrate the futility of ideals. 

And so it was with the Puritans, who were them- 
selves the children of the revolt against social corrup- 
tion. They fondly believed that a new era was to be 
ushered in by the rule of the Cromwellian saints. 
What the Cromwellian saints did in truth usher in, was 



154 PREFACE. 

the carnival of debauchery of Charles II, in its turn 
to be succeeded by the capitalistic competitive age 
which we have known, and which has abutted in the 
recent war. 

Man can never hope to change his physical necessi- 
ties, and therefore his moral nature must always re- 
main the same in essence, if not in form. As Washing- 
ton truly said, "The motives which predominate most 
in human affairs are self-love and self-interest," and 
"nothing binds one country or one state to another 
but interest." 

If, then, it be true, that man is an automatic animal 
moving always along the paths of least resistance to- 
ward predetermined ends, it cannot fail to be useful to 
us in the present emergency to mark, as distinctly as we 
can, the causes which impelled Germany, at a certain 
point in her career, to choose the paths which led to her 
destruction rather than those which, at the first blush, 
promised as well, and which seemed to be equally as 
easy and alluring. And we may possibly, by this proc- 
ess, expose certain phenomena which may profit us, 
since such an examination may help us to estimate 
what avenues are like to prove ultimately the least 
resistant. 

Throughout the Middle Ages North Germany, which 
is the region whereof Berlin is the capital, enjoyed 
relatively little prosperity, because Brandenburg, for 
example, lay beyond the zone of those main trade routes 
which, before the advent of railways, served as the 
arteries of the eastern trade. Not until after the open- 



PREFACE. 155 

ing of the Industrial Revolution in England, did that 
condition alter. Nor even then did a change come 
rapidly because of the inertia of the Russian people. 
Nevertheless, as the Russian railway system developed, 
Berlin one day found herself standing, as it were, at 
the apex of a vast triangle whose boundaries are, 
roughly, indicated by the position of Berlin itself, 
Petersburg, Warsaw, Moscow, Kiev, and the Ukraine. 
Beyond Berlin the stream of traffic flowed to Hamburg 
and thence found vent in America, as a terminus. 
Great Britain, more especially, demanded food, and 
food passed by sea from Odessa. Hence Russia 
served as a natural base for Germany, taking German 
manufactures and offering to Germany a reservoir ca- 
pable of absorbing her redundant population. Thus 
it had long been obvious that intimate relations with 
Russia were of prime importance to Germany since all 
the world could perceive that the monied interests of 
Russia must more and more fall into German hands, 
because of the intellectual limitations of the Russians. 
Also pacification to the eastward always was an in- 
tegral part of Bismarck's policy. Notwithstanding 
which other influences conflicted with, and ultimately 
overbalanced, this eastern trend in Germany. 

For many thousand years before written history 
began, the economic capital of the world, the seat for 
the time being of opulence and of splendor, and at once 
the admiration and the envy of less favored rivals, has 
been a certain ambulatory spot upon the earth's surface, 
at a point where the lines of trade from east to west 



156 PREFACE. 

have converged. And always the marked idiosyn- 
crasy of this spot has been its unrest. It has con- 
stantly oscillated from east to west according as the 
fortunes of war have prevailed, or as the march of ap- 
plied science has made one or another route of trans- 
portation cheaper or more defensible. 

Thus Babylon was conquered and robbed by Rome, 
and Rome, after a long heyday of prosperity, yielded 
to Constantinople, while Constantinople lost her su- 
premacy to Venice, Genoa, and North Italy, follow- 
ing the sack of Constantinople by the Venetians in 
1202 A.D. The Fairs of Champaign in France, and 
the cities of the Rhine and Antwerp were the glory of 
the Middle Ages, but these great markets faded when 
the discovery of the long sea voyage to India threw the 
route by the Red Sea and Cairo into eccentricity, and 
caused Spain and Portugal to bloom. Spain's pros- 
perity did not, however, last long. England used 
war during the sixteenth century as an economic 
weapon, pretty easily conquering. And since the 
opening of the Industrial Revolution, at least, London, 
with the exception of the few years when England suf- 
fered from the American revolt of 1776, has assumed 
steadily more the aspect of the great international 
centre of exchanges, until with Waterloo her suprem- 
acy remained unchallenged. It was this brilliant 
achievement of London, won chiefly by arms, which 
more than any other cause impelled Germany to try 
her fortunes by war rather than by the methods of 
peace. 



PREFACE. 157 

Nor was the German calculation of chances unrea- 
sonable or unwarranted. For upwards of two centu- 
ries Germany had found war the most profitable of all 
her economic ventures; especially had she found the 
French war of 1870 a most lucrative speculation. And 
she felt unbounded confidence that she could win as 
easy a triumph with her army, over the French, in the 
twentieth as in the nineteenth century. But, could 
she penetrate to Paris and at the same time occupy the 
littoral of the Channel and Antwerp, she was persuaded 
that she could do to the commerce of England what 
England had once done to the commerce of Spain, and 
that Hamburg and Berlin would supplant London. 
And this calculation might have proved sound had it 
not been for her oversight in ignoring one essential 
factor in the problem. Ever since North America was 
colonized by the English, that portion of the continent 
which is now comprised by the Republic of the United 
States, had formed a part of the British economic sys- 
tem, even when the two fragments of that system were 
competing in war, as has occurred more than once. 
And as America has waxed great and rich these rela- 
tions have grown closer, until of recent years it has be- 
come hard to determine whether the centre of gravity 
of this vast capitalistic mass lay to the east or to the 
west of the Atlantic. One fact, however, from before 
the outset of this war had been manifest, and that was 
that the currents of movement flowed with more power 
from America to England than from America to Ger- 
many. And this had from before the outbreak of hos- 



158 PREFACE. 

tilities affected the relations of the parties. Should 
Germany prevail in her contest with England, the result 
would certainly be to draw the centre of exchanges to 
the eastward, and thereby to throw the United States, 
more or less, into eccentricity; but were England to pre- 
vail the United States would tend to become the centre 
toward which all else would gravitate. Hence, per- 
fectly automatically, from a time as long ago as the 
Spanish War, the balance, as indicated by the weight 
of the United States, hung unevenly as between Ger- 
many and England, Germany manifesting something 
approaching to repulsion toward the attraction of the 
United States while Great Britain manifested favor. 
And from subsequent evidence, this phenomenon 
would seem to have been thus early developed, because 
the economic centre of gravity of our modern civiliza- 
tion had already traversed the Atlantic, and by so doing 
had decided the fortunes of Germany in advance, in 
the greater struggle about to come. Consider atten- 
tively what has happened. In April, 1917, when the 
United States entered the conflict, Germany, though it 
had suffered severely in loss of men, was by no means 
exhausted. On the contrary, many months subse- 
quently she began her final offensive, which she pushed 
so vigorously that she penetrated to within some sixty 
miles of Paris. But there, at Chateau Thierry, on the 
Marne, she first felt the weight of the economic shift. 
She suddenly encountered a division of American 
troops advancing to oppose her. Otherwise the road 
to Paris lay apparently open. The American troops 



PREFACE. 159 

were raw levies whom the Germans pretended to de- 
spise. And yet, almost without making a serious effort 
at prolonged attack, the Germans began their retreat, 
which only ended with their collapse and the fall of 
the empire. 

A similar phenomenon occurred once before in Ger- 
man history, and it is not an uncommon incident in 
human experience when nature has already made, or 
is on the brink of making, a change in the seat of the 
economic centre of the world. In the same way, when 
Constantine won the battle of the Milvian Bridge, with 
his men fighting under the standard of the Labarum, 
it was subsequently found that the economic capital 
of civilization had silently migrated from the Tiber to 
the Bosphorus, where Constantine seated himseK at 
Constantinople, which was destined to be the new 
capital of the world for about eight hundred years. 
So in 1792, when the Prussians and the French refu- 
gees together invaded France, they never doubted for 
an instant that they should easily disperse the mob, 
as they were pleased to call it, of Kellermann's "vaga- 
bonds, cobblers, and tailors." Nevertheless the Ger- 
mans recoiled on the slope of Valmy from before the 
republican army, almost without striking a blow, nor 
could they be brought again to the attack, although the 
French royalists implored to be allowed to storm the 
hill alone, provided they could be assured of support. 
Then the retreat of the Duke of Brunswick began, and 
this retreat was the prelude to the Napoleonic empire, 
to Austerlitz, to Jena, to the dismemberment and to 



160 PREFACE. 

the reorganization of Prussia and to the evolution of 
modern Germany: in short, to the conversion of the 
remnants of mediaeval civilization into the capitalistic, 
industrial, competitive society which we have known. 
And all this because of the accelerated movement 
caused by science. 

If it be, indeed, a fact that the victory of Chateau 
Thierry and the subsequent retreat of the German 
army together with the collapse of the German Em- 
pire indicate, as there is abundant reason to suppose 
that they may, a shift in the world's social equilibrium, 
equivalent to the shift in Europe presaged by Valmy, 
or to that which substituted Constantinople for Rome 
and which was marked by the Milvian Bridge, it fol- 
lows that we must prepare ourselves for changes pos- 
sibly greater than our world has seen since it marched 
to Jerusalem under Godfrey de Bouillon. And the 
tendency of those changes is not so very difficult, per- 
haps, roughly to estimate, always premising that they 
are hardly compatible with undue optimism. Sup- 
posing, for example, we consider, in certain of their 
simpler aspects, some of the relations of Great Britain 
toward ourselves, since Great Britain is not only our 
most important friend, assuming that she remain a 
friend, but our most formidable competitor, should 
competition strain our friendship. Also Great Britain 
has the social system nearest akin to our own, and most 
likely to be influenced by the same so-called demo- 
cratic tendencies. For upwards of a hundred years 
Great Britain has been, and she still is, absolutely de- 



PREFA CE. 161 

pendent on her maritime supremacy for life. It was on 
that issue she fought the Napoleonic wars, and when 
she prevailed at Trafalgar and Waterloo she assumed 
economic supremacy, but only on the condition that 
she should always be ready and willing to defend it, 
for it is only on that condition that economic suprem- 
acy can be maintained. War is the most potent en- ^ 
gine of economic competition. Constantinople and 
Antwerp survived and flourished on the same identical 
conditions long before the day of London. She must 
keep her avenues of communication with all the world 
open, and guard them against possible attack. So 
long as America competed actively with England on 
the sea, even for her own trade, her relations with 
Great Britain were troubled. The irritation of the 
colonies with the restrictions which England put upon 
their commerce materially contributed to foment the 
revolution, as abundantly appears in the famous case 
of John Hancock's sloop Liberty, which was seized for 
smuggling. So in the War of 1812, England could not 
endure the United States as a competitor in her con- 
test with France. She must be an ally, or, in other 
words, she must function as a component part of the 
British economic system, or she must be crushed. The 
crisis came with the attack of the Leopard on the 
Chesapeake in 1807, after which the possibility of main- 
taining peace, under such a pressure, appeared, in its 
true light, as a phantasm. After the war, with more 
or less constant friction, the same conditions con- 
tinued until the outbreak of the Rebellion, and then 



162 PREFACE. 

Great Britain manifested her true animus as a com- 
petitor. She waged an unacknowledged campaign 
against the commerce of the United States, building, 
equipping, arming, manning, and succoring a navy for 
the South, which operated none the less effectively 
because its action was officially repudiated. And in 
this secret warfare England prevailed, since when the 
legislation of the United States has made American 
competition with England on the sea impossible. 
Wherefore we have had peace with England. We have 
supplied Great Britain with food and raw materials, 
abandoning to England the carrying trade and an un- 
disputed naval supremacy. Consequently Great Brit- 
ain feels secure and responds to the full force of that 
economic attraction which makes America naturally, 
a component part of the British economic system. 
But let American pretensions once again revive to the 
point of causing her to attempt seriously to develop 
her sea power as of yore, and the same friction would 
also revive which could hardly, were it pushed to its 
legitimate end, eventuate otherwise than in the ulti- 
mate form of all economic competition. 

If such a supposition seems now to be fanciful, it is 
only necessary to reflect a moment on the rapidity 
with which national relations vary under competition, 
to be assured that it is real. As Washington said, 
the only force which binds one nation to another is 
interest. The rise of Germany, which first created 
jealousy in England, began with the attack on Den- 
mark in 1864. Then Russia was the power which the 



PREFACE. 163 

British most feared and with whom they were on the 
worst of terms. About that period nothing would 
have seemed more improbable than that these relations 
would be reversed, and that Russia and England would 
jointly, within a generation, wage fierce war on Ger- 
many. We are very close to England now, but we may 
be certain that, were we to press, as Germany pressed, 
on British maritime and industrial supremacy, we 
should be hated too. It is vain to disguise the fact 
that British fortunes in the past have hinged on Amer- 
ican competition, and that the wisest and most saga- 
cious Englishmen have been those who have been most 
alive to the fact. Richard Cobden, for example, was 
one of the most liberal as he was one of the most emi- 
nent of British economists and statesmen of the middle 
of the nineteenth century. He was a democrat by 
birth and education, and a Quaker by religion. In 
1835, just before he entered public life, Cobden visited 
the United States and thus recorded his impressions 
on his return: 

"America is once more the theatre upon which 
nations are contending for mastery; it is not, how- 
ever, a struggle for conquest, in which the victor 
will acquire territorial dominion — the fight is for 
commercial supremacy, and will be won by the cheap- 
est. ... It is from the silent and peaceful rivalry of 
American commerce, the growth of its manufac- 
tures, its rapid progress in internal improvements, 
... it is from these, and not from the barbarous policy 
or the impoverishing armaments of Russia, that the 



164 PREFACE. 

grandeur of our commercial and national prosperity 
is endangered." ^ 

It is not, however, any part of my contention that 
nature should push her love of competition so far as 
necessarily to involve us in war with Great Britain, 
at least at present, for nature has various and most 
unlooked-for ways of arriving at her ends, since men 
never can determine, certainly in advance, what 
avenue will, to them, prove the least resistant. They 
very often make an error, as did the Germans, which 
they can only correct by enduring disaster, defeat, 
and infinite suffering. Nature might very well, for 
example, prefer that consolidation should advance yet 
another step before a reaction toward chaos should 
begin. 

This last war has, apparently, been won by a fusion 
of two economic systems which together hold and ad- 
minister a preponderating mass of fluid capital, and 
which have partially pooled their resources to prevail. 
They appear almost as would a gigantic lizard which, 
having been severed in an ancient conflict, was now 
making a violent but only half -conscious effort to cause 
the head and body to unite with the tail, so that the 
two might function once more as a single organism, 
governed by a single will. Under our present form of 
capitaUstic life there would seem to be no reason why 
this fluid capital should not fuse and by its energy 
furnish the motor which should govern the world. 
Rome, for centuries, was governed by an emperor, who 
1 John Morley, The Life of Richard Cohden, 107, 108. 



PREFACE. 165 

represented the landed class of Italy, under the forms ^ 
of a republic. It is not by any means necessary that '^ 
a plutocratic mass should have a recognized political ■" 
head. And America and England, like two enormous 
banking houses, might in effect fuse and yet go on as 
separate institutions with nominally separate boards 
of directors. 

But it is inconceivable that even such an expedient 
as this, however successful at the outset, should perma- 
nently solve the problem, which resolves itself once 
more into individual competition. It is not imagin- 
able that such an enormous plutocratic society as I 
have supposed could conduct its complex affairs upon 
the basis of the average intelligence. As in Rome, 
a civil service would inevitably be organized which 
would contain a carefully selected body of ability. We 
have seen such a process, in its initial stages, in the 
recent war. And such a civil service, however se- 
lected and however trained, would, to succeed, have 
to be composed of men who were the ablest in their 
calling, the best educated, and the fittest: in a word, 
the representatives of what we call "the big business" 
of the country. Such as they might handle the rail- 
roads, the telegraph lines, the food supply, the question 
of competitive shipping, and finally prices, as we have 
seen it done, but only on condition that they belonged 
to the fortunate class by merit. 

But supposing, in the face of such a government, the 
unfortunate class should protest, as they already do 
protest in Russia, in Germany, and even in England and 



166 PREFA CE. 

here at home, that a legal system which sanctions such 
a civilization is iniquitous. Here, the discontented say, 
you insist on a certain form of competition being carried 
to its limit. That is, you demand intellectual and 
peaceful competition for which I am unfit both by 
education, training, and mental ability. I am there- 
fore excluded from those walks in life which make a 
man a freeman. I become a slave to capital. I must 
work, or fight, or starve according to another man's 
convenience, caprice, or, in fine, according to his will. 
I could be no worse off under any despot. To such a 
system I will not submit. But I can at least fight. 
Put me on a competitive equality or I will blow your 
civilization to atoms. To such an argument there is 
no logical answer possible except the answer which all 
extreme socialists have always advanced. The for- 
tunate man should be taxed for all he earns above the 
average wage, and the State should confiscate his accu- 
mulations at death. Then, with a system of govern- 
ment education, obligatory on all, children would start 
equal from birth. 

Here we come against the hereditary instinct, the 
creator and the preserver of the family: the instinct 
which has made law and order possible, so far as our 
ancestors or we have known order, as far back as the 
Ice Age. If the coming world must strive with this 
question, or abandon the "democratic ideal," the fu- 
ture promises to be stormy. 

But even assuming that this problem of individual 
competition be overcome, we are as far as ever from 



PREFACE. 167 

creating a system of moral law which shall avail us, 
for we at once come in conflict with the principle of ab- 
stract justice which demands that free men shall be 
permitted to colonize or move where they will. But 
supposing England and America to amalgamate; they 
now hold or assume to control all or nearly all the 
vacant regions of the earth which are suited to the 
white man's habitation. And the white man cannot 
live and farm his land in competition with the Asiatic; 
that was conclusively proved in the days of Rome. 

But it is not imaginable that Asiatics will submit to 
this discrimination in silence. Nothing can probably 
constrain them to resignation but force, and to apply 
force is to revert to the old argument of the savage or 
the despot, who admits that he knows no law save that 
of the stronger, which is the system, however much 
we have disguised it and, in short, lied about it, under 
which we have hved and under which our ancestors 
have lived ever since the family was organized, and 
under which it is probable that we shall continue to 
live as long as any remnant of civilization shall survive. 

Nevertheless, it seems to be far from improbable 
that the system of industrial, capitalistic civilization, 
which came in, in substance, with the "free thought" 
of the Reformation, is nearing an end. Very prob- 
ably it may have attained to its ultimate stages and 
may dissolve presently in the chaos which, since the 
Reformation, has been visibly impending. Democracy 
in America has conspicuously and decisively failed, in 
the collective administration of the common pubUc 



168 PREFACE. 

property. Granting thus much, it becomes simply a 
question of relative ineflSciency, or degradation of 
type, culminating in the exhaustion of resources by 
waste; unless the democratic man can supernatu- 
rally raise himself to some level more nearly ap- 
proaching perfection than that on which he stands. 
For it has become self-evident that the democrat 
cannot change himself from a competitive to a non- 
competitive animal by talking about it, or by pretend- 
ing to be already or to be about to become other than 
he is, — the victim of infinite conflicting forces. 

BROOKS ADAMS. 
QuiNCY, July 20, 1919. 



THE EMANCIPATION OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



THE 

EMANCIPATION OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE COMMONWEALTH. 

The mysteries of the Holy Catholic Church had 
been venerated for ages when Europe burst from her 
mediaeval torpor into the splendor of the Renaissance. 
Political schemes and papal abuses may have precipi- 
tated the inevitable outbreak, but in the dawn of mod- 
ern thought the darkness faded amidst which mankind 
had so long cowered in the abject terrors of supersti- 
tion. Already in the beginning of the fifteenth cen- 
tury many of the ancient dogmas had begun to awaken 
incredulity, and sceptics learned to mock at that claim 
to infallibility upon which the priesthood based their 
right to command the blind obedience of the Chris- 
tian world. Between such adversaries compromise 
was impossible ; and those who afterward revolted 
against the authority of the traditions of Rome sought 
refuge under the shelter of the Bible, which they 
grew to reverence with a passionate devotion, believ- 
ing it to have been not only directly and verbally in- 
spired by God, but the only channel through which he 
had made known his will to men. 



172 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

Thus the movement was not toward new doctrines ; 
on the contrary, it was the rejection of what could no 
longer be believed. Calvin was no less orthodox than 
St. Augustine in what he accepted ; his heresy lay 
in the denial of enigmas from which his understand- 
ing recoiled. The mighty convulsion of the Reforma- 
tion, therefore, was but the supreme effort of the race 
to tear itself from the toils of a hierarchy whose life 
hung upon its success in forcing the children to wor- 
ship the myths of their ancestral religion. 

Three hundred years after Luther nailed his theses 
to the church door the logical deduction had been 
drawn fi'om his great act, and Christendom had been 
driven to admit that any concession of the right to 
reason upon matters of faith involved the recognition 
' of the freedom of individual thought. But though 
this noble principle has been at length established, 
long years of bloodshed passed before the victory was 
won ; and from the outset the attitude of the clergy 
formed the chief obstacle to the triumph of a more 
liberal civilization ; for howsoever bitterly Catholic 
and Protestant divines have hated and persecuted 
each other, they have united like true brethren in 
their hatred and their persecution of heretics ; for 
such was their inexorable destiny. 

Men who firmly believe that salvation lies within 
their creed alone, and that doubters suffer endless tor- 
ments, never can be tolerant. They feel that duty 
commands them to defend their homes against a deadly 
peril, and even pity for the sinner urges them to wring 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 173 

from him a recantation before it is too late ; and then, 
moreover, dissent must lessen the power and influence 
of a hierarchy and may endanger its very existence ; 
therefore the priests of every church have been stimu- 
lated to crush out schism by the two strongest passions 
that can inflame the mind — by bigotry and by ambi- 
tion. 

In England the Reformation was controlled by 
statesmen, whose object was to invest the crown with '' 
ecclesiastical power, and who made no changes except 
such as they thought necessary for their purpose. 
They repudiated the papal supremacy, and adopted 
articles of religion sufficiently evangelical in form, but 
they retained episcopacy, the liturgy, and the sur- 
plice ; the cross was still used in baptism, the people 
bowed at the name of Jesus, and knelt at the com- 
munion. Such a compromise with what they deemed 
idolatry was offensive to the stricter Protestants, and 
so early as 1550 John Hooper refused the see of 
Gloucester because he would not wear the robes of 
office ; thus almost from its foundation the church was 
divided into factions, and those who demanded a more 
radical reform were nicknamed Puritans. As time 
elapsed large numbers who could no longer bring 
themselves to conform withdrew from the orthodox 
communion, and began to worship by themselves ; 
persecution followed, and many fled to Holland, where 
they formed congregations in the larger towns, the 
most celebrated of them being that of John Robinson 
at Leyden, which afterward founded Plymouth. But 



174 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

the intellectual ferment was universal, and the same 
upheaval that was rending the church was shaking 
the foundations of the state : power was passing into 
the hands of the people, but a century was to elapse 
before the relations of the sovereign to the House of 
Commons were fully adjusted. During this interval 
the Stuarts reigned and three of the four kings suf- 
fered exile or death in the fierce contest for mastery. 

The fixed determination of Charles I. was to es- 
tablish a despotism and enforce conformity with ritu- 
alism ; and the result was the Great Rebellion. 

Among the statesmen who advised him, none has 
met with such scant mercy from posterity as Laud, 
who has been gibbeted as the impersonification of 
narrowness, of bigotry, and of cruelty. The judgment 
is unscientific, for whatever may be thought of the 
humanity or wisdom of his policy, he only did what 
all have done who have attempted to impose a creed 
on men. 

The real grievance has never been that an obser- 
vance has been required, or an indulgence refused, but 
that the right to think has been denied. Provided a 
boundary be fixed within which the reason must be 
chained, the line drawn by Laud is as reasonable as 
that of Calvin ; Geneva is no more infallible than 
Canterbury or Rome. Comprehension is the dream 
of visionaries, for some will always differ from any 
confession of faith, however broad ; and where there 
are dogmas there will be heretics till all have perished. 
But in their fear and hatred of individual free thought 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 175 

regarding the mysteries of religion, Laud, Calvin, and 
the Pope agreed. 

With the progress of the war, the Puritans, who 
had at first been united in their opposition to the 
crown, themselves divided ; one party, to which most 
of the peers and of the non-conforming clergy be- 
longed, being anxious to reestablish the monarchy, 
and set up a rigid Presbyterianism ; the other, of 
whose spirit Cromwell was the incarnation, resolving 
each day more firmly to crush the king and proclaim 
freedom of conscience ; and it was this doctrine of 
toleration which was the snare and the abomination in 
the eyes of evangelical divines. 

Robert Baillie, the Scotch commissioner, while in 
London, anxiously watching the rise of the power of 
the Lidependents in Parliament, with each victory of 
their armies in the field wrote, " Liberty of conscience, 
and toleration of all and any religion, is so prodigious 
an impiety that this religious parliament cannot but 
abhor the very meaning of it." Nor did his reverend 
brethren of the Westminster Assembly fall any whit 
behind him when they rose to expound the word. In 
a letter of 17th May, 1644, he thus described their 
doctrine : " This day was the best that I have seen 
since I came to England. . . . After D. Twisse had 
begun with a brief prayer, Mr. Marshall prayed large 
two hours, most divinely, confessing the sins of the 
members of the assembly, in a wonderful, pathetick, 
and prudent way. After, Mr. Arrowsmith preached an 
hour, then a psalm ; thereafter, Mr. Vines prayed near 



176 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

two hours, and Mr. Palmer preached an hour, and Mr. 
Seaman prayed near two hours, then a psalm ; after, 
Mr. Henderson brought them to a sweet conference of 
the heat confessed in the assembly, and other seen faults 
to be remedied, and the conveniency to preach against 
all sects, especially Anabaptists and Antinomians. 
Dr. Twisse closed with a short prayer and blessing." ^ 

But Cromwell, gifted with noble instincts and tran- 
scendent political genius, a layman, a statesman, and 
a soldier, was a liberal from birth till death. 

" Those that were sound in the faith, how proper was 
it for them to labor for liberty, . . . that men might 
not be trampled upon for their consciences ! Had not 
they labored but lately under the weight of persecu- 
tion ? And was it fit for them to sit heavy upon oth- 
ers ? Is it ingenuous to ask liberty and not to give it ? 
What greater hypocrisy than for those who were op- 
pressed by the bishops to become the greatest oppres- 
sors themselves, so soon as their yoke was removed ? 
I could wish that they who call for liberty now also 
had not too much of that spirit, if the power were in 
their hands." ^ 

" If a man of one form will be trampling upon the 
heels of another form, if an Independent, for example, 
will despise him under Baptism, and will revile him 
and reproach him and provoke him, — I will not suffer 
it in him. If, on the other side, those of the Anabap- 

^ Baillie's Letters and Journals, ii. 18. 

2 Speech at dissolution of first Parliament, Jan. 22, 1655. 
Carlyle's Cromwell, iv. 107. 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 177 

tist shall be censuring the godly ministers of the 
nation who profess under that of Independency ; or 
if those that profess under Presbytery shall be re- 
proaching or speaking evil of them, traducing and 
censuring of them, as I would not be willing to see 
the day when England shall be in the power of the 
Presbytery to impose upon the consciences of others 
that profess faith in Christ, — so I will not endure 
any reproach to them." ^ 

The number of clergymen among the emigrants to 
Massachusetts was very large, and the character of 
the class who formed the colony was influenced by 
them to an extraordinary degree. Many able pastors 
had been deprived in England for non-conformity, 
and they had to choose between silence or exile. To 
men of their temperament silence would have been in- 
tolerable ; and most must have depended upon their 
profession for support. America, therefore, offered 
a convenient refuge. The motives are less obvious 
which induced the leading laymen, some of whom 
were of fortune and consequence at home, to face the 
hardships of the wilderness. Persecution cannot be 
the explanation, for a government under which Hamp- 
den and Cromwell could live and be returned to Par- 
liament w^as not intolerable ; nor does it appear that 
any of them had been severely dealt with. The wish 
of the Puritan party to have a place of retreat, should 
the worst befall, may have had its weight with indi- 
viduals, but probably the influence which swayed the 

* Speech made September, 1656. Carlyle's Cromwell, iv. 234. 



178 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

larger number was the personal ascendancy of their 
pastors, for that ascendancy was complete. In a com- 
munity so selected, men of the type of Baillie must 
have vastly outnumbered those of the stamp of Crom- 
well, and in point of fact their minds were generally 
cast in the ecclesiastical mould and imbued with the 
ecclesiastical feeling. Governor Dudley represented 
them well, and at his death some lines were found in 
his pocket in which their spirit yet glows in aU the 
fierceness of its bigotry. 

" Let men of God in Courts and Churches watch 
O're such as do a Toleration hatch, 
Lest that 111 Egg bring forth a Cockatrice, 
To poison all with heresie and vice." ^ 

' In former ages churches had been comprehensive 
to this extent : infants had been baptized, and, when 
the child had become a man, he had been admitted to 
the communion as a matter of course, unless his life 
had given scandal ; but to this system the Congrega- 
tionalist was utterly opposed. He believed that, hu- 
man nature being totally depraved, some became re- 
generate through grace ; that the signs of grace were 
as palpable as any other traits of character, and could 
be discerned by all the world ; therefore, none should 
be admitted to the sacrament who had not the marks 
of the elect ; and as in a well-ordered community the 
godly ought to rule, it followed that none should be 
enfranchised but members of the church. 

To suppose such a government could be maintained 
in England was beyond the dreams even of an enthu- 
1 Magnalia, bk. 2, ch. v. § 1. 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 179 

siast, and there can be little doubt that the controlling 
incentive with many of those who sailed was the hope, 
with the aid of their divines, of founding- a religious 
commonwealth in the wilderness which should har- 
monize with their interpretation of the Scriptures. 

The execution of such a project was, however, far 
from easy. It would have been most unsafe for the 
emigrants to have divulged their true designs, since 
these were not only unlawful, but would have been 
highly offensive to the king, and yet they were too 
feeble to exist without the protection of Great Britain, 
therefore it was necessary to secure for themselves the 
rights of English subjects, and to throw some sem- 
blance at least of the sanction of law over the orjrani- 
zation of their new state. Accordingly, a patent ^ was 
obtained from the crown, by which twenty-five persons 
were incorporated under the name of the Governor 
and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England ; 
and as the extent of the powers therein granted has 
given rise to a controversy which is not yet closed, it 
is necessary to understand the nature of that instru- 
ment m order to comprehend the bearings of the bit- 
ter strife which darkens the history of the first fifty 
years of the colony. 

The germ of the written charter is so ancient as to 
be lost in obscurity. During the Middle Ages, op- 
pression was, speaking generally, the accepted con- 
dition of society, no man not noble having the right 
in theory, or the power in practice, to control his own 
actions without interference from his feudal superior. 
1 March 4, 1629. 



/ 



180 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

^ Under such circumstances the only hope for the weak 
was to combine, and most of the early triumphs of 
V freedom were won by combinations of commons against 
some noble, or of nobles against a king. Organization 
is difficult for a peasantry, but easy for burghers, and 
from the outset these seem to have united for their 
common defense against the neighboring barons ; and 
thus was born the mediseval guild. 

The ancient townsmen were not usually strong 
' enough to fight for their liberties, so they generally 
resorted to purchase ; they agreed with their lord 
upon a price to be paid for a privilege, and were 
given for their money a grant, which, because it was 
written, was called a charter. 

The following charter of the Merchants' Guild of 
Leicester is very early and very simple. It presup- 
poses that there could be no doubt about the local 
customs, which are therefore not enumerated, and it 
shows that the guild of Leicester existed as a corpora- 
tion at the Conquest, and must already have held 
property in succession and been liable to suit through 
two reigns : — 

" Robert, Earl of Mellent, to Ralph, and all his 
barons, French and English, of all his land in Eng- 
land, greeting : Know ye, that I have granted to my 
merchants of Leicester their Guild Merchant, with all 
^ customs which they held in the time of King William, 
of King William his son, and now hold in the time of 
Henry the king. 

" Witness : R., the son of Alcitil." 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 181 

The object of these ancient writings was only to 
record the fact of corporate existence ; the popuhir 
custom by which the guilds were regulated was taken "^ 
for granted ; but obviously they must have had suc- 
cession, been liable to suit, able to contract, and, in a 
word, to do all those acts which were afterward set 
forth. And such has uniformly been the process by '^ 
which English jurisprudence has been shaped ; a 
usage grows up that courts recognize, and, by their 
decisions, establish as the common law ; but judicial 
decisions are inflexible, and, as they become anti- 
quated, they are themselves modified by legislation. 
Lawyers observed these customary companies for 
some centuries before they learned what functions were 
universal ; but, with the lapse of time, the patents be- 
came more elaborate, until at length a voluminous 
grant of each particular power was held necessary to ' 
create a new corporation. 

A merchants' guild, like the one of Leicester, was 
an association of the townsmen for their common wel- 
fare. Every trader was then called a merchant, and 
as almost every burgher lived by trade, and was also / 
a landowner, to the extent at least of his dwelling, it 
followed that the guild practically included all free ' 
male inhabitants ; the guild hall was used as the town 
hall, the guild ordinances were the town ordinances, / 
and the corporation became the government of the 
borough, and as such chose persons to represent it in 
Parliament, when summoned by the king's writ to 
send burgesses to Westminster. 



182 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

London is a corporation by prescription and not by 
virtue of any particular charter, and to this day its 
city hall is called by the ancient name, Guild Hall. 
But with the growth of wealth and population the 
original fraternity divided into craft organizations (so 
long ago, indeed, that no record of its existence re- 
mains), and each trade organized a guild, with a hall 
of its own ; and thus it came to pass that the twelve 
livery companies — the Mercers, the Grocers, the 
Goldsmiths, the Drapers, the Fishmongers, and the 
rest — became the government of the capital of Eng- 
land. 

All mediaeval institutions tended to aristocracy and 
monopoly, and, accordingly, after the merchant guilds 
had split into these corporate trade unions, boroughs 
waxed exclusive, and membership, instead of being 
an incident of citizenship, grew to confer citizenship 
itself ; thus the franchise, being confined to freemen, 
and freedom or membership having come to depend 
on birth, marriage, election, or purchase, the constit- 
uencies which returned a majority of the House of 
Commons grew so petty and corrupt as to threaten 
the existence of parliamentary government itself, and 
the abuse at last culminated in the agitation which 
produced the Reform Bill. 

When legal forms had taken shape, the land upon 
which a town stood was not unusually granted to the 
mayor and commonalty by metes and bounds,^ to 

1 See Charter of Plymouth, granted 1439. History of Plym- 
outh,, p. 50. The incorporation was by statute. 






THE COMMONWEALTH. 183 

them and their successors forever, upon payment of 
a rent ; and the mayor and common council were em- 
powered to make laws and ordinances for the local 
government, and to fine, imprison, and sometimes 
whip and otherwise punish offenders, so as their stat- 
utes, fines, pains, and penalties were reasonable and 
not repugnant to law.^ The foreign trading company 
was an offshoot of the guild, and was intended to 
protect commerce. Obviously some such organization 
must have been necessary, for, if property was inse- 
cure within the realm, it was far more exposed with- 
out; and, indeed, in the fourteenth century, English 
merchants domiciled on the Continent could hardly 
have been safer than Europeans are now who garrison 
the so-called factories upon the coast of Africa. 

At the Conquest, the Hanse merchants had a house 
in London, which was afterward famous as the Steel 
Yard. They lived a strange life, — a combination of 
that of the trader, the soldier, and the monk. Their 
fortified warehouse, exposed to the attacks of the fero- 
cious mob, was occasionally taken and sacked ; and the 
garrison shut up within was subject to an iron dis- 
cipline. They were forbidden to marry, no woman 
passed the gates, nor did they ever sleep a night with- 
out the walls ; but, always on the watch, they lay in 
their cells ready to repulse a storm. For many years 
these Germans seem to have monopolized the carrying 
trade, for it was not till the thirteenth century that 
Englishmen appear to have made an effort at compe- 
1 History of Tiverton, App. 5. 



184 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

tition. However, about 1296 certain London mer- 
cers are said to have obtained a grant of privileges 
from John, Duke of Brabant, and to have established 
a wool market at Antwerp.^ The recognition of the 
Flemish government was of course necessary ; but 
they could hardly have maintained themselves with- 
out some supiJort at home ; for, although their ware- 
house was abroad, they were English merchants, and 
they must have relied upon English protection. No 
very eai'ly documents remain ; but an elaborate char- 
ter, granted by Edward IV. in 14G3, proves that the 
corporation had then had a long legal existence.^ The 
crown thereby confirmed one Obrey, the governor, in 
his office during pleasure, with the wages theretofore 
enjoyed ; existing laws were approved ; the governor 
and merchants were empowered to elect twelve Jus- 
ticers, who were to hold courts for all merchants and 
mariners in those parts ; and the company was au- 
thorized to regulate the trade and control the traders, 
provided no laws were passed contrary to the intent 
of that charter. 

Here, as in the Merchant Guild, the inevitable aris- 
tocratic revolution took place, and the old democratic 
brotherhood became a strict monopoly. The oppres- 
sion was so flagrant that a petition was presented to 
Parliament in 1497 against the exactions of the Mer- 
chant Adventurers, as the association was then called, 
by which it appeared that interlopers, trading to Hot 

^ Anderson's History of Commerce. 
2 Hakluyt's Voyages, i. 230. 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 185 

land and Flanders, were fined £40, whereas any sub- 
ject might have become a freeman in earlier times for 
an old noble, or about %s. 8d. ; ^ and the scandal was 
so great that the fine was fixed at 10 marks, or £6 
13s. 4:d., by statute. During the stagnation of the 
Middle Ages few traces of such commercial enter- 
prises are to be found, but with the sixteenth century 
Europe awoke to a new life and thrilled with a new 
energy. Trade shared in the impulse. In 1554 Philip 
and Mary incorporated the Russia Company in regu- 
lar modern form ; in 1581 the Turkey Company was 
organized ; in 1600 the East India Company received 
its charter ; and, to come directly to what is mate- 
rial, in 1629 Charles I. signed the patent of the Gov- 
ernor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New 
England. 

Stripped of its verbiage, the provisions are simple. 
The stockholders, or " freemen," as they were then 
called, were to meet once a quarter in a " General 
Court." This General Court, or stockholders' meet- 
ing, chose the officers, of which there were twenty, the 
governor, deputy governor, and eighteen assistants 
or directors, on the last Wednesday in each Easter 
Term. The assistants were intrusted with the business 
management, and were to meet once a month or of- 
tener ; while the General Court was empowered to ad- 
mit freemen, and " to make laws and ordinances for 
the good and welfare of the said company, and for the 
government and ordering of the said lands and planta- 
1 12 Heury VII. ch. vi. 



186 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

tion, and the people inhabiting and to inhabit the same, 
as to them from time to time shall be thought meet, — 
so as such laws and ordinances be not contrary or re- 
pugnant to the laws and statutes of this our realm of 
England." The criminal jurisdiction was limited to 
the " imposition of lawful fines, mulcts, imprisonment, 
or other lawful correction, according to the course of 
other corporations in this our realm of England." 

The " course of corporations " referred to was well 
established. The Master and Wardens of the Guild 
of Drapers in London, for example, could make " such 
. . . pains, punishments, and penalties, by corporal 
punishment, or fines and amercements," . . . " as shall 
seem . . . necessary," provided their statutes were 
reasonable and not contrary to the laws of the king- 
dom.i In like manner, boroughs such as Tiverton 
might " impose and assess punishments by imprison- 
ments, etc., and reasonable fines upon offenders." ^ 

But all lawyers knew that such grants did not con- 
vey full civil or criminal jurisdiction, which, when 
thought needful, was specially conferred, as was done 
in the case of the East India Company upon their pe- 
tition in 1624,^ and in that of Massachusetts by the 
charter of William and Mary. 

Such was the undoubted theory, and evidently there 
must always have been some practical means of check- 
ing the abuse of power by these strong organizations. 

^ Herbert's Livery Companies, i. 489. 
* See History of Tiverton, App. 5. 
8 Bruce, Annals, i. 252. 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 187 

In semi-barbarous ages the sovereign took matters into 
his own hands by seizing the franchise, and even the 
Plantagenets repeatedly suspended or revoked the lib- 
erties of London, — often, no doubt, for cause, but 
sometimes also to make money by a resale ; and a suc- 
cession of these arbitrary forfeitures demonstrated that 
charters to be of value must be beyond the grantor's 
control. Resort was had to the courts, as a matter of 
course, and finally it was settled that relief should be 
given by a writ of quo warranto, upon which the ques- 
tion of the violation of privileges could be tried ; and 
curious records still remain of ancient litio-ations of 
this nature. 

In 1321 complaint was made against the London 
Weavers for injuring the public by passing regulations 
tending to raise the price of cloth.^ It was alleged that 
the guild, with this intent, had limited the working 
hours in the day, the working days in the year, and 
the number of apprentices the freemen might employ ; 
and the prayer was that for these abuses the charter 
should be annulled. 

The cause was tried before a jury, who found the 
truth of some of the charges ; but the judgment is lost, 
as the roll is imperfect. 

There was danger, moreover, to the citizen from the 
oppression of these powerful bodies, as well as to the 
public from their usurpations ; and were authority 
wholly wanting, argument would be almost unneces- 
sary to prove that some appellate tribunal must always 
1 Liber Customarxim, i. 416-424. 



188 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

have had jurisdiction to pass upon the validity of cor- 
porate legislation ; for otherwise any summary punish- 
ment might have been inflicted upon an individual, 
though notoriously unlawful, and the only redress pos- 
sible would have been subsequent proceedings to vacate 
the charter. 

Through appeals, corporations could be controlled ; 
and by none was this control so stubbornly disputed, 
or its necessity so clearly demonstrated, as by the 
Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New 
England. A good illustration is the trial of the 
Quaker, Wenlock Christison, for his life in 1G61. 

" William Leddra being thus dispatch'd, it was re- 
solved to make an end also of Wenlock Christison. 
He therefore was brought from the prison to the court 
at Boston, where the governor John Indicot, and the 
deputy governor Richard Billingham, being both pres- 
ent, it was told him, ' Unless you will renounce your 
religion, you shall surely die.' But instead of shrink- 
ing, he said wath an undaunted courage, ' Nay, I shall 
not change my religion, nor seek to save my life ; 
neither do I intend to deny my Master ; but if I lose 
my life for Christ's sake, and the preaching of the gos- 
pel, I shall save my life.' . . . John Indicot asked him 
' what he had to say for himself, why he should not 
die ? ' . . . Then Wenlock asked, ' By what law will 
you put me to death ? ' The answer was, ' We have a 
law, and by our law you are to die.' ' So said the 
Jews of Christ,' (reply 'd Wenlock) ' we have a law, 
and by our law he ought to die. Who empowered 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 189 

you to make that law ? ' To which one of the board 
answered, ' We have a patent, and are the patentees ; 
judge whether we have not power to make laws.' 
Hereupon Wenlock asked again, ' How, have you 
power to make laws repugnant to the laws of Eng- 
land?' 'No,' said the governor. 'Then,' (reply 'd 
Wenlock,) 'you are gone beyond your bounds, and 
have forfeited your patent ; and that is more than you 
can answer.' 'Are you,' ask'd he, 'subjects to the 
king, yea or nay ? ' . . . To which one said, ' Yea, we 
are so.' ' Well,' said Wenlock, ' so am L' . . . ' There- 
fore seeing that you and I are subjects to the king, 
I demand to be tried by the laws of my own nation.' 
It was answered, You shall be tried by a bench and a 
jury.' For it seems they began to be afraid to go on in 
the former course, of trial without a jury. . . . But 
Wenlock said, ' That is not the law, but the manner 
of it ; for I never heard nor read of any law that was 
in England to hang Quakers.' To this the governor 
reply'd ' that there was a law to hang Jesuits.' To 
which Wenlock return' d, ' If you put me to death, it 
is not because I go under the name of a Jesuit, but of 
a Quaker. Therefore, I appeal to the laws of my own 
nation.' But instead of taking notice of this, one 
said ' that he was in their hands, and had broken their 
law, and they would try him.' " ^ 

Yet, though the ecclesiastical party in Massachusetts 
obstinately refused to admit appeals to the British 
judiciary up to the last moment of their power, for the 
1 Sewel, pp. 278, 279. 



190 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

obvious reason that the existence of the theocracy de- 
pended upon the enforcement of such legislation as 
that under which the Quakers suffered, there was no 
principle in the whole range of English jurisprudence 
more firmly established. By a statute of Henry VI. 
passed in 1436, corporate enactments were to be sub- 
mitted to the judges for approval ; and the Court of 
King's Bench always set aside such as were bad, when- 
ever the question of their validity was presented for 
adjudication.^ 

But discussion is futile ; the proposition is self-evi- 
dent, that an association endowed with the capacity of 
acting like a single man, for certain defined objects, 
which shall attempt other objects, or shall seek to com- 
pass its ends by unlawful means, violates the condition 
upon which its life has been granted, transcends the 
limits of its existence, and forfeits its privileges ; and 
that under such circumstances its ordinances are void, 
and none are bound to yield them their obedience. 

Approached thus from the standpoint of legal his- 
tory, no doubt can exist concerning the scope of the 
franchise secured by the Puritans for the Massachu- 
setts colony. The instrument obtained from Charles I. 
embodied certain of their number in an English cor- 
poration, whose only lawful business was the American 
trade, as the business of the East India Company was 

1 Stat. 15 H. VI. ch. 6. Stat. 19 H. VII. ch. 7. Clark's 
Case, 5 Coke, 633, decided a. d. 1596. See Kyd on Corporations, 
ii. 107-110, where authorities are collected. Child v. Hudson 
Bay Co., 2 P. W. 207. 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 191 

trade in Hindostan. To enable them to act effec- 
tively, a tract of land in New England, between the 
Merrimack and the Charles, was conveyed to them, as 
the soil upon which a town stood was conveyed to the 
mayor and commonalty. Within this territory they 
were authorized to established their plantations and 
forts, which they were empowered to defend against 
attack, as the Hanse merchants defended the Steel 
Yard in London. They were also permitted to gov- 
ern the country within their grant by reasonable regu- 
lations calcvdated to preserve the peace, and of much 
the same character as the municipal ordinances of 
towns, subject, of course, to judicial supervision. The 
corporation itself was created subject to the municipal 
laws of England, and could have no existence without 
the realm ; and though perhaps even then the Amer- 
ican wilderness might have been held to belong to the 
British empire, it formed no part of the kingdora,^ 
and was altogether beyond the limits of that juris- 
diction from whose customs and statutes the life of 
this imaginary being sprang. Therefore, the govern- 
ing body could legally exercise its functions only 
when domiciled in some English town." 

Sir Richard Sheldon, the solicitor-general, advised 
the king that he was signing a charter containing "such 
. . . clauses for y^ electing of Governors and Officers 
here in England, . . . and powers to make lawes and 

* Blaxjkstone's Commentaries, i. 109. 

2 On this subject see the able paper of Mr. Deane, in Massa- 
chusetts Historical Society Proceedings, December, 1809, p. 166. 



1/ 



192 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

ordinances for setling ye governement and maglstraeye 
for y® plantacon there, . . . as . . . are usuallie al- 
lowed to Corporacbns in England." ' And there can 
be no question that his opinion was sound. 

Nothing can be imagined more ill-suited to serve 
as the organic law of a new commonwealth than this 
instrument. No provision was made for superior or 
probate courts, for a representative assembly, for the 
incorporation of counties and towns, for police or 
taxation. In short, hardly a step could be taken 
toward founding a territorial government based upon 
popular suffrage without working a forfeiture of the 
charter by abuse of the franchise. The colonists, it 
is true, afterward advanced very different theories of 
construction ; but that they were well aware of their 
legal position is demonstrated by the fact that after 
some hesitation from apprehension of consequences, 
they ventured on the singularly bold and lawless 
measure of secretly removing their charter to Amer- 
ica and establishing their corporation in a land which 
they thought would be beyond the process of West- 
minster Hall.^ The details of the settlement are 
related in many books, and require only the brief- 
est mention here. In 1628 an association of gen- 
tlemen bought the tract of country lying between 
the Merrimack and Charles from the Council of Plym- 
outh, and sent Endicott to take charge of their pur- 
chase. A royal patent was, however, thought neces- 
sary for the protection of a large colony, and one 

1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. 1869-70, p. 173. a 1629, Aug. 29. 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 193 

y 
having been obtained, the Company of Massachusetts 

Bay was at once organized in England, Endicott was 
appointed governor in America, and six vessels sailed 
during the spring of 1629, taking out several hundred 
persons and a " plentiful provision of godly minis- 
ters." In August the church of Salem was gathered 
and Mr. Higginson was consecrated as their teacher. 
In that same month Winthrop, Saltonstall, and others 
met at Cambridge and signed an agreement binding 
themselves upon the faith of Christians to embark for 
the plantation by the following March ; " Provided 
always that before the last of September next, the 
whole government, together with the patent, ... be 
first by an order of court legally transferred and es- 
tablished to remain with us and others which shall 
inhabite upon the said plantation." ^ The Company 
accepted the proposition, WinthroiJ was chosen gov- 
ernor, and he anchored in Salem harbor in June.^ 
More than a thousand settlers landed before winter, 
and the first General Court was held at Boston in 
October ; nor did the emigration thus begun entirely 
cease until the meeting of the Long Parliament. 

From the beginning the colonists took what meas- 
ures they thought proper, without regarding the lim- ^ 
itations of the law. Counties and towns had to be 
practically incorporated, taxes were levied upon in- 
habitants, and in 1634 all pretence of a General Court 
of freemen was dropped, and the towns chose dele- y 
gates to represent them, though the legislature was 
1 Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. i. 28. ^ 1630. 



194 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

not divided into two branches until ten years later. 
When the government had become fully organized 
supreme power was vested in the General Court, a 
legislature composed of two houses ; the assistants, 
or magistrates, as they were called, and the depu- 
ties. The governor, deputy governor, and assistants 
were elected by a general vote ; but each town sent 
two deputies to Boston. 

For some years justice was dispensed by the magis- 
trates according to the Word of God, but gradually a 
judicial system was established ; the magistrate's local 
court was the lowest, from whence causes went by 
appeal to the county courts, one of whose judges was 
always an assistant, and probate jurisdiction was given 
to the two held at Ipswich and at Salem. From the 
judgments entered here an appeal lay to the Court of 
Assistants, and then to the General Court, which was 
the tribunal of last resort. The clergy and gentry 
pertinaciously resisted the enactment of a series of 
general statutes, upon which the people as steadily 
insisted, until at length, in 1641, " The Body of Lib- ^ 
erties" was approved by the legislature. This com- 
pilation was the work of the Rev. Mr. Ward, pastor 
of Ipswich, and contained a criminal code copied al- 
most word for word from the Pentateuch, but apart 
from matters touching religion, the legislation was 
such as English colonists have always adopted. A 
major-general was elected who commanded the mili- 
tia, and in 1652 money was coined. 

The social institutions, however, have a keener in- 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 195 

terest, for they reflect that strong cast of thought '' 
which has stamped its imprint deep into the character 
of so much of the American people. The seventeenth 
century was aristocratic, and the inhabitants of the 
larger part of New England were divided into three 
classes, the commonalty, the gentry, and the clergy. 
Little need be said of the first, except that they were 
a brave and determined race, as ready to fight as 
Cromwell's saints, who made Rupert's troopers " as 
stubble to their swords ; " that they were intelligent, 
and would not brook injustice ; and that they were 
resolute, and would not endure oppression. All know 
that they were energetic and shrewd. 

The gentry had the weight in the community that 
comes with wealth and education, and they received 
the deference then paid to birth, for they were for the 
most part the descendants of English country- gen tie- 
men. As a matter of course they monopolized the 
chief offices ; and they were not sentenced by the 
courts to degrading punishments, like whipping, for 
their offences, as other criminals were. They even 
showed some wish at the outset to create legal dis- 
tinctions, such as a magistracy for life, and a disposi- 
tion to magnify the jurisdiction of the Court of Assist- 
ants, whose seats they filled ; but the action of the -^ 
people was determined though quiet, a chamber of "^^ 
deputies was chosen, and such schemes were heard 
of no more. 

Yet notwithstanding the existence of this aristo- 
cratic element, the real substance of influence and ^ 



196 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

power lay with the clergy. It has been taught as an 
axiom of Massachusetts history, that from the outset 
the town was the social and political unit ; but an 
analysis of the evidence tends to show that the or- 
ganization of the Puritan Commonwealth was eccle- 
siastical, and the congregation, not the town, the basis 
upon which the fabric rested. By the constitution of 
the corporation the franchise went with the freedom 
of the company ; but in order to form a constituency 
which would support a sacerdotal oligarchy, it was 
enacted in 1631 " that for time to come noe man 
shalbe admitted to the freedome of this body polli- 
ticke, but such as are members of some of the 
churches within . . . the same." ^ Thus though com- 
municants were not necessarily voters, no one could be 
a voter who was not a communicant ; therefore the 
town-meeting was in fact nothing but the church 
m.eeting, possibly somewhat attenuated, and called 
by a different name. By this insidious statute the 
clergy seized the temporal power, which they held till 
the charter fell. The minister stood at the head of 
the congregation and moulded it to suit his purposes 
and to do his will ; for though he could not when op- 
posed admit an inhabitant to the sacrament, he could 
peremptorily exclude therefrom all those of whom he 
disapproved, for "none are propounded to the congre- 
gation, except they be first allowed by the elders." ^ 
In such a community the influence of the priesthood 

^ Mass. Records, i. 87. 

2 Winthrop's reply to Vane, Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. i. 101. 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 197 

must have been overwhelming. Not only in an age 
without newsjjapers or tolerable roads were their ser- 
mons, preached several times each week to every 

V voter, the most effective of political harangues ; but, 
unlike other party orators, they were not forced to 
stimulate the sluggish, or to convince the hostile, for 
from a people glowing with fanaticism, each elder 

y picked his band of devoted servants of the church, 

^ men passionately longing to do the will of Christ, 
whose commands concerning earth and heaven their 
pastor had been ordained to declare. Nor was their 
power bounded by local limits ; though seldom holding 
office themselves, they were solemnly consulted by the 
government on every important question that arose, 
whether of war or peace, and their counsel was rarely 
disregarded. They gave their opinion, no matter how 
foreign the subject might be to their profession or 
their education ; and they had no hesitation in pass- 
ing upon the technical construction of the charter 

^- with the authority of a bench of judges. An amus- 
ing example is given by Winthrop : " The General 
Court assembled again, and all the elders were sent 
for, to reconcile the differences between the magis- 
trates and deputies. When they were come the first 
question put to them was, . . . whether the magistrates 
are, by patent and election of the people, the standing 
council of this commonwealth in the vacancy of the 
General Court, and have power accordingly to act in 
all cases subject to government, according to the said 
patent and the laws of this jurisdiction ; and when 



v^ 



198 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

any necessary occasions call for action from authority, 
in cases where there is no particular express law pro- 
vided, there to be guided by the word of God, till the 
General Court give particular rules in such cases. 
The elders, having received the question, withdrew 
themselves for consultation about it, and the next day 
sent to know, when we would appoint a time that they 
might attend the court with their answer. The mag- 
istrates and deputies agreed upon an hour " and 
..." their answer was affirmative, on the magis- 
trates behalf, in the very words of the question, with 
some reasons thereof. It was delivered in writing by 
Mr. Cotton in the name of them all, they being all 
present, and not one dissentient." Then the magis- 
trates propounded four more questions, the last of 
which is as follows : " Whether a judge be bound to 
pronounce such sentence as a positive law prescribes, 
in case it be apparently above or beneath the merit of 
the offence?" To which the elders replied at great 
length, saying that the penalty must vary with the 
gravity of the crime, and added examples : " So any 
sin committed with an high hand, as the gathering of 
sticks on the Sabbath day, may be punished with death 
when a lesser punishment may serve for gathering 
J sticks privily and in some need." ^ Yet though the 
clerical influence was so unbounded the theocracy it- 
self was exposed to constant peril. In monarchies 
such as France or Spain the priests who rule the king 
have the force of the nation at command to dispose of 
1 Winthrop, u. 204, 205. 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 199 

at their will ; but in Massachusetts a more difficult 
problem was presented, for the voters had to be con- 
trolled. By the law requiring freemen to be church- 
members the elders meant to grasp the key to the suf- 
frage, but experience soon proved that more stringent 
regulation was needed. 

According to the original Congregational theory 
each church was complete and independent, and elected 
its own officers and conducted its own worship, free 
from interference from without, except that others of 
the same communion might offer advice or admoni- 
tion. Under the theocracy no such loose system was 
possible, for heresy might enter in three different 
ways ; first, under the early law, "blasphemers " might 
form a congregation and from thence creep into the 
company ; second, an established church might fall 
into error; third, an unsound minister might be 
chosen, who would debauch his flock by securing the 
admission of sectaries to the sacrament. Above all, a 
creed was necessary by means of which false doctrine 
might be instantly detected and condemned. Accord- 
ingly, one by one, as the need for vigilance increased, 
laws were passed to guard these points of danger. 

First, in 1635 it was enacted,^ " Forasmuch as it 
hath bene found by sad experience, that much trouble 
and disturbance hath happened both to the chiipch 
& civill state by the officers & members of some 
churches, w*^^ have bene gathered ... in an vndue 
manner . . . it is . . . ordered that . . . this Court 
1 1635-6, March 3. 



/ 



200 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

doeth not, nor will hereafter, approue of any such com- 
panyes of men as shall henceforthe ioyne in any pre- 
tended way of church fellowshipp, without they shall 
first acquainte the magistrates, & the elders of the 
great"" pte of the churches in this jurisdicion, with 
their intencons, and have their approbacon herein. 
And fPurther, it is ordered, that noe pson, being a 
member of any churche which shall hereafter be gath- 
ered without the approbaSon of the magistrates, & the 
greater pte of the said churches, shallbe admitted to 
the ffreedome of this comonwealthe." ^ 

In 1648 all the elders met in a synod at Cambridge ; 
they adopted the Westminster Confession of Faith 
and an elaborate " Platform of Church Discipline," 
the last clause of which is as follows : "If any church 
. . . shall grow schism atical, rending itself from the 
communion of other churches, or shall walk incor- 
rigibly and obstinately in any corrupt way of their 
own contrary to the rule of the word ; in such case 
the magistrate, ... is to put forth his coercive power, 
as the matter shall require." ^ 

In 1658 the General Court declared : " Whereas it 
is the duty of the Christian magistrate to take care 
the people be fed w''^ wholesome & sound doctrine, & 
in this houre of temptation, ... it is therefore ordered, 
that henceforth no person shall . . . preach to any com- 
pany of people, whither in church society or not, or be 
ordeyned to the office of a teaching elder, where any 
two organnick churches, councill of state, or Generall 

^ Mass. Rec. i. 168. ^ Magnolia, bk. 5, ch. xvii. § 9. 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 201 

Court shall declare theire dissatisfaction thereat, either 
in refference to doctrine or practize . . . and in case 
of ordination . . . timely notice thereof shall be given 
unto three or fower of the neighbouring organicke 
churches for theire approbation." ^ And lastly, in 
1679, the building of meeting-houses was forbidden, 
without leave from the freemen of the town or the 
General Court.^ 

But legislation has never yet controlled the action of 
human thought. All experience shows that every age, 
and every western nation, produces men whose nature 
it is to follow the guidance of their reason in the face 
of every danger. To exterminate these is the task of 
religious persecution, for they can be silenced only by 
death. Thus is a dominant priesthood brought face 
to face with the alternative of surrendering its power 
or of killing the heretic, and those bloody deeds that 
cast their sombre shadow across the history of the 
Puritan Commonwealth cannot be seen in their true 
bearing unless the position of the clergy is vividly be- 
fore the mind. 

Cromwell said that ministers were " helpers of, 
not lords over, God's people," ^ but the orthodox New 
Englander was the vassal of his priest. Winthrop 
was the ablest and the most enlightened magistrate 
the ecclesiastical party ever had, and he tells us that 

^ Mass. Rec. iv. pt. 1, p. 328. 
2 Mass. Rec. v. 213. 

^ Cromwell to Dundass, letter cxlviii. Carlyle's Cromwell, 
iii. 72. 



202 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

" I honoured a faithful minister in my heart and could 
have kissed his feet." ^ If the governor of Massachu- 
setts and the leader of the emigration could thus de- 
scribe his moral growth, — a man of birth, education, 
and fortune, who had had wide experience of life, and 
was a lawyer by profession, — the awe and terror felt 
by the mass of the communicants can be imagined. 

Jonathan Mitchel, one of the most famous of the 
earlier divines, thus describes his flock : " They were 
a gracious, savoury-spirited people, principled by Mr. 
Shepard, liking an humbling, mourning, heart-break- 
ing ministry and spirit ; living in religion, praying 
men and women." And " he would speak with such 
a transcendent majesty and liveliness, that the people 
. . . would often shake under his dispensations, as if 
they had heard the sound of the trumpets from the 
burning mountain, and yet they would mourn to think, 
that they were going presently to be dismissed from 
such an heaven upon earth." ..." When a publick 
admonition was to be dispensed unto any one that had 
offended scandalously . . . the hearers would be all 
drowned in tears, as if the admonition had been, as 
indeed he would with much artifice make it be di- 
rected unto them all ; but such would be the compas- 
sion, and yet the gravity, the majesty, the scriptural 
and awful pungency of these his dispensations, that 
the conscience of the offender himself, could make no 
resistance thereunto." ^ 

^ Life and Letters of Winthrop, i. 61. 
3 Magnalia, bk. 4, ch. iv. §§ 9, 10. 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 203 

Their arrogance was fed by the submission of the 
people, and they would not tolerate the slighest oppo- 
sition even from their most devoted retainers. The 
Reforming Synod was held in 1679. " When the re- 
port of a committee on ' the evils that had provoked 
the Lord ' came vip for consideration, ' Mr. Wheelock 
declared that there was a cry of injustice in that 
magistrates and ministers were not rated ' (taxed), 
' which occasioned a very warm discourse. Mr. Stod- 
der ' (minister of Northampton) ' charged the deputy 
with saying what was not true, and the deputy gov- 
ernor ' (Danforth) ' told him he deserved to be laid 
by the heels, etc' 

'' ' After we broke up, the deputy and several others 
went home with Mr. Stodder, and the deputy asked 
forgiveness of him and told him he freely forgave him, 
but Mr. Stodder was high.' The next day ' the deputy 
owned his being in too great a heat, and desired the 
Lord to forgive it, and Mr. Stodder did something, 
though very little, by the deputy.' " ^ Wheelock was 
lucky in not having to smart more severely for his 
temei'ity, for the unfortunate Ursula Cole was sen- 
tenced to pay £5 ^ or be whipped for the lighter crime 
of saying " she had as lief hear a cat mew " ^ as Mr. 

^ Palfrey's History of New England, iii. 330, note 2. Extract 
from Journal of Rev. Peter Thacher. 

^ Five pounds was equivalent to a sum between one himdred 
and twenty-five and one hundred and fifty dollars now. Ursula 
was of course poor, or she would not have been sentenced to be 
whipped. The fine was therefore extremely heavy. 

8 Frothingham, History of Charlestown, p. 208. 



{^ 



y 



y 



204 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

Shepard preach. The daily services in the churches 
consumed so much time that they became a grievance 
with which the government was unable to cope. 

In 1633 the Court of Assistants, thinking " the 
keepeing of lectures att the ordinary howres nowe ob- 
serued in the forenoone, to be dyvers wayes peiudi- 
ciall to the comon good, both in the losse of a 
whole day, & bringing oth'" charges & troubles to the 
place where the lecture is kept," ordered that they 
should not beg^in before one o'clock.' The evil still 
continued, for only the next year it was found that so 
many lectures " did spend too much time and proved 
overburdensome," and they were reduced to two a 
week.^ Notwithstanding these measures, relief was 
not obtained, because, as the legislature complained 
in 1639, lectures " were held till night, and sometimes 
within the night, so as such as dwelt far off covdd not 
get home in due season, and many weak bodies could 
not endure so long, in the extremity of the heat or cold, 
without great trouble and hazard of their health," ^ 
and a consultation between the elders and magistrates 
was suggested. 

But to have the delights of the pulpit abridged was 
more than the divines could bear. They declared 
roundly that their privileges were invaded ; * and the 
General Court had to give way. A few lines in Win- 
throp's Journal give an idea of the tax this loquacity 
must have been upon the time of a poor and scattered 

1 Mass. Rec. i. 110. 2 Felt's Ecd. Hist. i. 201. 

8 Winthrop, i. 324. * Idem, i. 325. 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 205 

people. " Mr. Hooker being to preach at Cambridge, 
the governor and many others went to hear him. . . . 
He preached in the afternoon, and having gone on, 
with much strength of voice and intention of spirit, 
about a quarter of an hour, he was at a stand, and 
told the people that God had deprived him both of his 
strength and matter, &c. and so went forth, and about 
half an hour after returned again, and went on to 
very good purpose about two hours." ^ 

Common men could not have kept this hold vipon 
the inhabitants of New England, but the clergy w^ere 
learned, resolute, and able, and their strong but nar- 
row minds burned with fanaticism and love of power ; 
with their beliefs and under their temptations perse- 
cution seemed to them not only their most potent 
weapon, but a duty they owed to Christ — and that 
duty they unflinchingly performed. John Cotton, the 
most gifted among them, taught it as a holy work : 
" But the good that is brought to princes and subjects 
by the due punishment of apostate seducers and idol- 
aters and blasphemers is manifold. 

" First, it putteth away evill from the people and 
cutteth off a gangreene, which would spread to further 
ungodlinesse. . . . 

" Secondly, it driveth away wolves from worrying 
and scattering the sheep of Christ. For false teach- 
ers be wolves, . . . and the very name of wolves 
holdeth forth what benefit will redound to the sheep, 
by either killing them or driving them away. 
1 Winthrop, i. 304. 



206 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

" Thirdly, such executions upon such evill doers 
causeth all the country to heare and feare, and doe no 
more such wickednesse. . . . Yea as these punishments 
are preventions of like wickednesse in some, so are 
they wholesome medicines, to heale such as are curable 
of these eviles. . . . 

"Fourthly, the punishments executed upon false 
prophets and seducing teachers, doe bring downe 
showers of God's blessings upon the civill state. . . . 

" Fifthly, it is an honour to God's Justice that such 
judgments are executed. . . ." ^ 

All motives combined to drive them headlong into 
cruelty ; for in the breasts of the larger number, even 
the passion of bigotry was cool beside the malignant 
hate they felt for those whose opinions menaced their 
earthly power and dominion ; and they never wearied 
of exhorting the magistrates to destroy the enemies 
of the church. " Men's lusts are sweet to them, and 
they would not be disturbed or disquieted in their 
sin. Hence there be so many such as cry up tollera- 
tion boundless and libertinism so as (if it were in 
their power) to order a total and perpetual confine- 
ment of the sword of the civil magistrate unto its 
scabbard ; (a notion that is evidently distructive to 
this people, and to the publick liberty, peace, and 
prosperity of any instituted churches under heaven.)" ^ 

" Let the magistrates coercive power in matters of 

1 Bloody Tenent Washed, pp. 137, 138. 

^ Eye Salve, Election Sermon, by Mr. Shepard of Charles- 
town, p. 21. 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 207 

religion (therefore) be still asserted, seing he is one 
who is bound to God more than any other men to 
cherish his trvie religion ; . . . and how wofuU would 
the state of things soon be among us, if men might 
have liberty without eontroU to profess, or preach, or 
print, or publish what they list, tending to the seduc- 
tion of others." ^ Such feelings found their fit ex- 
pression in savage laws against dissenting sects ; these, 
however, will be dealt with hereafter ; only those 
which illustrate the fundamental principles of the 
theocracy need be mentioned here. One chief cause 
of schism was the hearing of false doctrine ; and in 
order that the people might not be led into tempta- 
tion, but might on the contrary hear true exposition 
of the word, every inhabitant was obliged to attend 
the services of the established church upon the Lord's 
day under a penalty of fine or imprisonment ; the fine 
not to exceed 5s. (equal to about $5 now) for every 
absence.^ 

" If any christian so called . . . shall contemptu- 
ously behave himselfe toward y* word preached, or y® 
messeng"^^ thereof called to dispence y® same in any 
congregation, ... or like a sonn of Corah cast upon 
his true doctrine or himselfe any reproach . . . shall 
for y^ first scandole be convented . . . and bound to 
their good behaviour ; and if a second time they 
breake forth into y^ like contemptuous carriages, 
either to pay <£5 to y^ publike treasury or to stand 

1 Eye Salve, p. 38. 

* 1634^35, 4 March. Mass. Rec. i. 140. 



208 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

two houres openly upon a block 4 foote high, on a 
lecture day, w*^ a pap fixed on his breast w*^ this, 
A Wanton Gospeller, written in capitall letfs y* 
oth'"s may fear & be ashamed of breaking out into the 
like wickednes." ^ 

" Though no humane pow'" be Lord ov' y® faith & 
consciences of men and therefore may not constraine 
y™ to beleeve or pfes ag®* their conscience, yet be- 
cause such as bring in damnable heresies tending to 
y® subversion of y® Christian faith . . . ought duely 
to be restrained fro*" such notorious impiety, if any 
christian . . . shall go about to subvert . . . y^ Chris- 
tian faith, by broaching . . . any damnable heresy, 
as deniing y® iniortality of y^ soule, or y® resurrection 
of y® body, or any sinn to be repented of in y® regen'- 
ate, or any evill done by y® outward man to be ac- 
counted sinn, or deniing y* Christ gave himselfe a ran- 
some for o' sinns ... or any oth"" heresy of such 
nature & degree . . . shall pay to y® coin on treas- 
ury during y^ first six months 20s. a month and for y® 
next six months 40s. p. m., and so to continue dureing 
his obstinacy ; and if any such pson shall endeav'^ to 
seduce others ... he shall forfeit . . . for every sev- 
erall offence . . . five pounds." ^ 

" For y® honno"^ of y® aetaernall God, whome only 
wee wor^P and serve," (it is ordered that) "no 
pson w*4n this jurisdicon, whether X*ian or pagan, 
shall wittingly and willingly psume to blaspheme his 

1 1646, 4 Nov. Mass. Rec. ii. 179. 

2 1646, 4 Nov. Mass. Rec. ii. 177. 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 209 

holy name either by wilfull or obstinate denying y^ 
true God, or reproach y^ holy religion of God, as if it 
were but a polliticke devise to keepe ignorant men 
in awe, ... or deny his creation or gourn"^* of y® 
world, or shall curse God, or shall vtter any other 
eminent kind of blasphemy, of y® like nature and de- 
gree ; if any pson or psons w*soeuer w**^in our juris- 
dicon shall breake this lawe they shall be putt to 
death." 1 

The special punishments for Antinomians, Baptists, 
Quakers, and other sectaries were fine and imprison- 
ment, branding, whipping, mutilation, banishment, 
and hanging. Nor were the elders men to shrink 
from executing these laws with the same ferocious 
spirit in which they were enacted. Remonstrance 
and command were alike neglected. The Long Par- 
liament warned them to beware ; Charles II. repeat- 
edly ordered them to desist ; their trusted and dear- 
est friend. Sir Richard Saltonstall, wrote from London 
to Cotton : "" It doth not a little grieve my spirit to 
heare what sadd things are reported dayly of your 
tyranny and persecution in New England, as that you 
fyne, whip, and imprison men for their consciences," ^ 
and told them their " rigid wayes have laid you very 
lowe in the hearts of the saynts." Thirteen of the 
most learned and eminent nonconforming ministers in 
England wrote to the governor of Massachusetts im- "^ 
ploring him that he and the General Court would not / 

1 Mass. Rcc. iii. 98. 

2 Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. ii. 127. 



210 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

by their violence " put an advantage into the hands of 
some who seek pretences and occasions against our 
liberty." ^ Winthrop, the wisest and ablest champion 
the clergy ever had, hung back. Like many another 
political leader, he was forced by his party into meas- 
ures from which his judgment and his heart recoiled. 
He tells us how, on a question arising between him and 
Mr. Haynes, the elders " delivered their several rea- 
sons which all sorted to this conclusion, that strict dis- 
cipline, both in criminal offences and in martial af- 
fairs, was more needful in plantations than in a settled 
state, as tending to the honor and safety of the gos- 
pel. Whereupon Mr. Winthrop acknowledged that 
he was convinced that he had failed in over much 
lenity and remissness, and would endeavor (by God's 
assistance) to take a more strict course thereafter." ^ 
But his better nature revolted from the foid task and 
once more regained ascendancy just as he sunk in 
death. For while he was lying very sick, Dudley 
came to his bedside with an order to banish a here- 
tic : " No," said the dying man, " I have done too 
much of that work already," and he would not sign 
the warrant.^ 

Nothing could avail, for the clergy held the state 
within their grasp, and shrank from no deed of blood 
to guard the interests of their order. 

The case of Gorton may serve as an example of a 
rigor that shocked even the Presbyterian Baillie ; it 

1 Magnalia, bk. 7, ch. iv. § 4. ^ Winthrop, i. 178. 

8 Life and Letters of Winthrop, ii. 393. 



1 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 211 

must be said in explanation of his story that the mag- 
istrates condemned Gorton and his friends to death 
for the crime of heresy in obedience to the unanimous 
decision of the elders,^ but the deputies refusing to 
concur, the sentence of imprisonment in/ irons during 
the pleasure of the General Court was agreed upon 
as a compromise. " Only they in New England are 
more strict and rigid than we, or any church, to svip- 
press, by the power of the magistrate, all who are not 
of their way, to banishment ordinarily and presently 
even to death lately, or perpetual slavery ; for one 
Jortin, sometime a famous citizen here for piety, hav- 
ing taught a number in New England to cast oft the 
word and sacrament, and deny angels and devils, and 
teach a gross kind of union with Christ in this life, by 
force of arms was brought to New Boston, and there 
with ten of the chief of his followers, by the civil 
court was discerned perpetual slaves, but the votes of 
many were for their execution. They lie in irons, 
though gentlemen ; and out of their prison write to 
the admiral here, to deal with the parliament for their 
deliverance." ^ 

Like all phenomena of nature, the action of the 
mind is obedient lo law ; the cause is followed by the 
consequence with the precision that the earth moves 
round the sun, and impelled by this resistless power 
his destiny is wrought out by man. To the ecclesias- 
tic a deep debt of gratitude is due, for it was by his 
effort that the first step from barbarism was made. 

1 Winthrop, ii. 146. ^ Baillie's Letters, ii. 17, 18. 



212 THE COMMONWEALTH. 

In the world's childhood, knowledge seems divine, and 
those who first acquire its rudiments claim, and are 
believed, to have received it by revelation from the 
gods. In an archaic age the priest is likewise the law- 
giver and the physician, for all erudition is concen- 
I trated in one supremely favored class — the sacred 
caste. Their discoveries are kept profoundly secret, 
and yet to perpetuate their mysteries among their 
descendants they found schools which are the only re- 
positories of learning ; but the time must inevitably 
come when this order is transformed into the deadliest 
enemy of the civilization which it has brought into be- 
ing. The power of the spiritual oligarchy rests upon 
superstitious terrors which dwindle before advancing 
enlightenment ; hence the clergy have become reaction- 
ary, have sought to stifle the spirit of free inquiry, 
and have used the schools which they have builded 
as instruments to keep alive unreasoning prejudice, 
or to serve their selfish ends. This, then, has been 
the fiercest battle of mankind ; the heroic struggle 
to break down the sacerdotal barrier, to popularize 
knowledge, and to liberate the mind, began ages be- 
fore the crucifixion upon Calvary ; it still goes on. 
In this cause the noblest and the bravest have poured 
forth their blood like water, and the path to freedom 
has been heaped with the corpses of her martyrs. 

In that tremendous drama Massachusetts has played 
her part ; it may be said to have made her intellectual 
life ; and it is the passion of the combat which gives 
an interest at once so sombre and so romantic to her 
story. 



THE COMMONWEALTH. 213 

In the tempest of the Reformation a handful of the 
sternest rebels were cast upon the bleak New England 
coast, and the fervor of that devotion which led them 
into the wilderness inspired them with the dream of 
reproducing the institutions of God's chosen people, a 
picture of which they believed was divinely preserved ^ 
for their guidance in the Bible. What they did in 
reality was to surrender their new commonwealth to ^ 
their priests. Yet they were a race in whose bone and 
blood the spirit of free thought was bred ; the impulse 
which had goaded them to reject the Roman dogmas 
was quick within them still, and revolt against the ec- ^" 
clesiastical yoke was certain. The clergy upon their 
side trod their appointed path with the precision of 
machines, and, constrained by an inexorable destiny, 
they took that position of antagonism to liberal 
thought which has become typical of their order. 
And the struggles and the agony by which this poor 
and isolated community freed itself from its gloomy 
bondage, the means by which it secularized its educa- 
tion and its government, won for itself the blessing of •' 
free thought and speech, and matured a system of '-^ 
constitutional liberty which has been the foundation 
of the American Union, rise in dignity to one of the 
supreme efforts of mankind. 



CHAPTER n. 

THE ANTINOMIANS. 

Habit may be defined with enough accuracy for 
ordinary purposes as the result of reflex action, or 
the immediate response of the nerves to a stimulus, 
without the intervention of consciousness. Many bod- 
ily functions are naturally reflex, and most move- 
ments may be made so by constant repetition ; they 
are then executed independently of the will. It is no 
exaggeration to say that the social fabric rests on the 
control this tendency exerts over the actions of men ; 
and its strength is strikingly exemplified in armies, 
which, when well organized, are machines, wherein 
subjection to command is instinctive, and insubordi- 
nation, therefore, practically impossible. 

An analogous phenomenon is presented by the 
church, whose priests have intuitively exhausted their 
ingenuity in weaving webs of ceremonial, as soldiers 
have directed their energies to perfecting manuals of 
arms ; and the evidence leads to the conclusion that 
increasing complexity of ritual indicates a densening 
ignorance and a deepening despotism. The Hindoos, 
the Spaniards, and the English are types of the pro- 
gression. 

Within the historic asres unnumbered methods of 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 215 

sacerdotal discipline have been evolved, but whether 
the means used to compass the end has been the be- 
wildering maze of a Levitical code, or the rosary and 
the confessional of Rome, the object has always been 
to reduce the devotee to the implicit obedience of the 
trooper. And the stupendous power of these amaz- 
ingly perfect systems for destroying the capacity for 
original thought cannot be fully realized until the 
mind has been brought to dwell upon the fact that 
the greatest eras of human progress have begun with 
the advent of those who have led successful insur- 
rection ; nor can the dazzling genius of these brilliant 
exceptions be appreciated, unless it be remembered 
how infinitely small has been the number of those 
among mankind who, having been once drilled to 
rigid conformity, have not lapsed into automatism, 
but have been endowed with the mental energy to re- 
volt. On the other hand, though ecclesiastics have 
differed widely in the details of the training they have 
enforced upon the faithful, they have agreed upon this 
cardinal principle : they have uniformly seized upon 
the education of the young, and taught the child to 
revere the rites in which he was made to partake 
before he could reason upon their meaning, for they 
understood well that the habit of abject submission to 
authority, when firmly rooted in infancy, would ripen 
into a second nature in after years, and would almost 
invariably last till death. 

But this manual of religion, this deadening of 
the soul by making mechanical prayers and genu- 



y 



216 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

flexions the gauge of piety, has always roused the 
deepest indignation in the great reformers ; and, un- 
appalled by the most ghastly perils, they have never 
ceased to exhort mankind to cast off the slavery of 
custom and emancipate the mind. Christ rebuked 
the Pharisees because they rejected the command- 
ment of God to keep their own tradition ; Paul pro- 
claimed that men should be justified by faith without 
the deeds of the law; and Luther preached that the 
Christian was free, that the soul did not live because 
the body wore vestments or prayed with the lips, and 
he denounced the tyranny of the clergy, who arrogated 
to themselves a higher position than others who were 
Christian in the spirit. On their side priesthoods 
know these leaders of rebellion by an unerring in- 
stinct and pursue them to the death. 

The ministers of New England were formalists to 
the core, and the society over which they dominated 
was organized upon the avowed basis of the manifes- 
tation of godliness in the outward man. The sad 
countenance, the Biblical speech, the sombre garb, the 
austere life, the attendance at worship, and, above all, 
the unfailing deference paid to themselves, were the 
marks of sanctification by which the elders knew the 
saints on earth, for whom they were to open the path 
to fortune by making them members of the church. 

Happily for Massachusetts, there has never been 
a time when all her children could be docile under 
such a rule ; and, among her champions of freedom, 
none have been braver than those who have sprung 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 217 

from the ranks of her ministry, as the fate of Roger 
Williams had already proved. In such a community, 
before the ecclesiastical power had been solidified 
by time, only a spark was needed to kindle a confla- 
gration, and that spark was struck by a woman. 

So early as 1634 a restless spirit was abroad, for 
Winthrop was then set aside, and now, in 1636, 
young Henry Vane was enthusiastically elected gov- 
ernor, though he was only twenty-four, and had been 
but a few months in the colony. The future seemed 
bright and serene, yet he had hardly taken office be- 
fore the storm burst, which not only overthrew him, 
but was destined to destroy that unhappy lady whom 
the Rev. Thomas Welde called the American Jezebel.^ 

John Cotton, the former rector of St. Botolph's, 
was the teacher of the Boston church. By common 
consent the leader of the clergy, he was the most brill- 
iant, and, in some respects, the most powerful man 
in the colony. Two years before, Anne Hutchinson, 
with all her family, had followed him from her home 
in Lincolnshire into the wilderness, for, " when our 
teacher came to New England, it was a great trou- 
ble unto me, my brother. Wheelwright, being put by 
also." 2 A gentlewoman of spotless life, with a kind 
and charitable heart, a vigorous understanding and 
dauntless courage, her failings were vanity and a bit- 

^ Opinions are divided as to the authorship of the Short Story, 
but I conclude from internal evidence that the ending at least 
was written by Mr. Welde. 

a Hutch. Hist. ii. 440. 




218 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

ter tongue toward those whom she disliked.^ Unfortu- 
nately also for herself, she was one of the enthusiasts 
who believe themselves subject to divine revelations, 
for this pretension would probably in any event have 
brought upon her the displeasure of the church. It 
is worth while to attempt some logical explanation of 
the dislike felt by the Massachusetts elders to any sug- 
gestion of such supernatural interposition. The half- 
unconscious train of reasoning on which they based 
their claim to exact implicit obedience from the peo- 
ple seems, when analyzed, to yield this syllogism : All 
revelation is contained in the Bible ; but to interpret 
the ancient sacred writings with authority, a techni- 
cal training is essential, which is confined to priests ; 
therefore no one can define God's will who is not of 
the ministry. Had the possibility of direct revelation 
been admitted this reasoning must have fallen ; for 
then, obviously, the word of an inspired peasant would 
have outweighed the sermon of an uninspired divine ; 
it follows, necessarily, that ecclesiastics so situated 
would have been jealous of lay preaching, and abso- 
lutely intolerant of the inner light. 

In May, 1636, the month of Yane's election, 
Mrs. Hutchinson had been joined by her brother-in- 
law, John Wheelwright, the deprived vicar of Bilsby. 
Her social influence was then at its height ; her ami- 
able disposition had made her popular, and for some 
time past she had held religious meetings for women 
at her house. The ostensible object of these gather- 
1 Cotton, Way of New England Churches, p. 52. 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 219 

ings was to recapitulate the sermons of the week ; but 
the step from discussion to criticism was short, and it 
soon began to be said that she cast reproach " upon 
the ministers, . . . saying that none of them did 
preach the covenant of free grace, but Master Cotton, 
and that they have not the scale of the Spirit, and so 
were not able ministers of the New Testament." ^ Or, 
to use colloquial language, she accused the clergy of 
being teachers of forms, and said that, of them all, 
Cotton alone appealed to the animating spirit like 
Luther or St. Paul. 

" A company of legall professors," quoth she, " lie 
poring on the law which Christ hath abolished." ^ 

Such freedom of speech was, of course, intolerable ; 
and so, as Cotton was implicated by her imprudent 
talk, the elders went to Boston in a body in October 
to take him to task. In the hope of adjusting the 
difficulty, he suggested a friendly meeting at his 
house, and an interview took place. At first Mrs. 
Hutchinson, with much prudence, declined to commit 
herself ; but the Rev. Hugh Peters besought her so 
earnestly to deal frankly and openly with them that 
she, confiding in the sacred character of a confidential 
conversation with clergymen in the house of her own 
religious teacher, committed the fatal error of ad- 
mitting that she saw a wide difference between Mr. 
Cotton's ministry and theirs, and that they could not 
preach a covenant of grace so clearly as he, because 

1 Short Story, p. 36. 

2 Wonder- Working Providence, Poole's ed. p. 102. 



220 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

they had not the seal of the Spirit. The progress of 
the new opinion was rapid, and it is clear Mrs. Hutch- 
inson had only given expression to a feeling of discon- 
tent which was both wide-spread and deep. Before 
winter her adherents, or those who condemned the 
covenant of works, — in modern language, the liberals, 
— had become an organized political party, of which 
Vane was the leader ; and here lay their first danger. 

Notwithstanding his eminent ability, he was then 
but a boy, and the task was beyond his strength. The 
stronghold of his party was Boston, where, except 
some half-dozen,^ the whole congregation followed him 
and Cotton : yet even here he met with the powerful 
opposition of Winthrop and the pastor, John Wilson. 
In the country he was confronted by the solid body 
of the clergy, whose influence proved sufficient to hold 
together a majority of the voters in substantially all 
the towns, so that the conservatives never lost control 
of the legislature. 

The position was harassing, and his nerves gave 
way under the strain. In December he called a court 
and one day suddenly announced that he had received 
letters from England requiring his immediate return ; 
but when some of his friends remonstrated he " brake 
forth into tears and professed that, howsoever the 
causes propounded for his departure were such as did 
concern the utter ruin of his outward estate, yet he 
would rather have hazarded all " . . . " but for the 
danger he saw of God's judgment to come upon us 
1 Winthrop, i. 212. 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 221 

for these differences and dissensions which he saw 
amongst us, and the scandalous imputations brought 
upon himself, as if he should be the cause of all," ' 

Such a flight was out of the question. The weight 
of his name and the protection given his supporters 
by the power of his family in England could not be 
dispensed with, and therefore the Boston congregation 
intervened. After a day's reflection he seems himself 
to have become convinced that he had gone too far 
to recede, so he " expressed himself to be an obedient 
child to the church and therefore . . . durst not go 
away. ^ 

That a young and untried man like Vane should 
have grown weary of his office and longed to escape 
will astonish no one who is familiar with the charac- 
ter and the mode of warfare of his adversaries. 

In that society a layman could not retort upon a 
minister who insulted him, nor could Vane employ the 
arguments with which Cromwell so effectually silenced 
the Scotch divines. The following is a specimen of 
the treatment to which he was probably almost daily 
subjected, and the scene in this instance was the more 
mortifying because it took place before the assembled 
legislature. 

" The ministers had met a little before and had 
drawn into heads all the points wherein they sus- 
pected ]Mr. Cotton did differ from them, and had pro- 
pounded them to him, and pressed him to a direct 
answer ... to every one ; which he had promised. 

1 Winthrop, i. 207. 2 i^^m, i. 208. 



222 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

. , . This meeting being spoke of in the court the 
day before, the governour took great offence at it, 
as being without his privity, &c., which this day Mr. 
Peter told him as plainly of (with all due reverence), 
and how it had sadded the ministers' spirits, that he 
should be jealous of their meetings, or seem to re- 
strain their liberty, &c. The governour excused his 
speech as sudden and upon a mistake. Mr. Peter 
told him also, that before he came, within less than 
two years since, the churches were in peace. . . . Mr. 
Peter also besought him humbly to consider his youth 
and short experience in the things of God, and to be- 
ware of peremptory conclusions which he perceived 
him to be very apt unto." ^ This coarse bully was the 
same Hugh Peters of whom Whitelock afterward com- 
plained that he often advised him, though he "under- 
stood little of the law, but was very opinionative," ^ 
and who was so terrified at the approach of death 
that on his way to the scaffold he had to drink liquor 
to keep from fainting.^ 

" Mr. Wilson " also " made a very sad speech to the 
General Court of the condition of our churches, and 
the inevitable danger of separation, if these differ- 
ences . . . were not speedily remedied, and laid the 
blame upon these new opinions . . . which all the 
magistrates except the governour and two others did 
confirm and all the ministers but two." ^ Those two 
were John Cotton and John Wheelwright, the preach- 
ers of the covenant of grace. 

1 Wiiithrop, i. 209. " Memorials, p. 521. 

8 Burnet, i. 162. < Wiuthrop, i. 209. 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 223 

Their brethren might well make sad speeches, for 
their cup of bitterness was full ; but they must be 
left to describe for themselves the tempest of fear and 
wrath that raged within them. " Yea, some that had 
beene begotten to Christ by some of their faithful! 
labours in this land " (England, where the tract was 
published,) " for whom they could have laid downe 
their lives, and not being able to beare their absence 
followed after them thither to New England to enjoy 
their labours, yet these falling acquainted with those 
seducers, were suddenly so altered in their affections 
toward those their spiritual! fatliers, that they would 
neither lieare them, nor willingly come in their com- 
pany, professing they had never received any good 
from them." . . . "Now the faitliful! ministers of 
Christ must have dung cast on their faces . . . must 
be pointed at as it were with the finger, and reproached 
by name, such a church officer is an ignorant man, 
and Itnows not Christ ; such an one is under a cov- 
enant of works : such a pastor is a proud man, and 
would make a good persecutor ... so that tlirough 
these reproaches occasion was given to men, to ab- 
horre the offerings of tlie Lord." ^ 

"Now, one of tliem in a solemne convention of min- 
isters dared to say to their faces, that they did not 
preach the Covenant of Free Grace, and that they 
themselves had not the scale of the Spirit. . . . Now, 
after our sermons were ended at our publike lectures, 
you might have scene halfe a dozen pistols discharged 
1 Welde's Short Story, Pref. §§ 7-11. 



224 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

at the face of the preacher (I meane) so many objec 
tions made by the opinionists in the open assembly 
against our doctrine ... to the marvellous weaken- 
ing of holy truths delivered ... in the hearts of all 
the weaker sort." ^ 

John Wheelwright was a man whose character ex- 
torts our admiration, if it does not win our love. The 
personal friend of Cromwell and of Vane, with a mind 
vigorous and masculine, and a courage stern and de- 
termined even above the Puritan standard of resolu- 
tion and of daring, he spoke the truth which was within 
him, and could neither be intimidated nor cajoled. 
In October an attempt had been made to have him 
settled as a teacher of the Boston church in conjunc- 
tion with Wilson and Cotton, but it had miscarried 
through Winthrop's opposition, and he had afterward 
taken charge of a congregation that had been gathered 
at Mount WoUaston, in what is now Quincy. 

On the 19th of January a fast was held on account 
of the public dissensions, and on that day Wheel- 
wright preached a great sermon in Boston which brought 
on the crisis. He was afterward accused of sedition : 
the charge was false, for he did not utter one se- 
ditious word,; but he did that which was harder to 
forgive, he struck at what he deemed the wrong with 
his whole might, and those who will patiently pore 
over his pages until they see the fire glowing through 
his rugged sentences will feel the power of his blow. 
And what he told his hearers was in substance this; 
1 Welde's ShoH Story, Pref. §§ 7-11. 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 225 

It maketh no matter how seemingly holy men be ac- 
cording to the law, if . . , they are such as trust to 
their own righteousness they shall die, saith the Lord. 
Do ye not after their works ; for they say and do 
not. They make broad their phylacteries and en- 
large the borders of their garments ; and love the up- 
permost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the 
synagogues ; and greetings in the market place and to 
be called of men. Rabbi, Rabbi. But believe on the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and ye shall be saved, for being 
justified by faith we have peace with God through our 
Lord Jesus Christ. And the way we must take if so 
be we will not have the Lord Jesus Christ taken from 
us is this, we must all prepare a spiritual combat, we 
must put on the whole armor of God, and must have 
our loins girt up and be ready to fight, . . . because 
of fear in the night if we will not fight the Lord Jesus 
Christ may come to be surprised. 

And when his brethren heard it they sought how 
they might destroy him ; for they feared him, because 
all the people were astonished at his doctrine. 

In March the legislature met, and Wheelwright was 
arraigned before a court composed, according to the ac- 
count of the Quaker Groom, of Henry Vane, " twelve 
magistrates, twelve priests, & thirty-three deputies." ^ 
His sermon was produced, and an attempt was made 
to obtain an admission that by those under a covenant 
of works he meant his brethren. But the accused 
was one whom it was hard to entrap and impossible 
^ Groom's Glass for New England, p. 6. 



226 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

to frighten. He defied his judges to controvert his 
doctrine, offering to prove it by the Scriptures, and 
as for the application he answered that " if he were 
shown any that walked in such a way as he had 
described to be a covenant of works, them did he 
mean." ^ Then the rest of the elders were asked if 
they " did walk in such a way, and they all acknowl- 
edged they did," ^ excepting John Cotton, who declared 
that " brother Wheelwright's doctrine was according 
to God in the parts controverted, and wholly and alto- 
gether." ^ He received ecclesiastical justice. There 
was no jury, and the popular assembly that decided 
law and fact by a partisan vote was controlled by his 
adversaries. Yet even so, a verdict of sedition was 
such a flagrant outrage that the clergy found it impos- 
sible to command prompt obedience. For two days 
the issue was in doubt, but at length " the priests got 
two of the magistrates on their side, and so got the 
major part with them."* They appear, however, to 
have felt too weak to proceed to sentence, for the pris- 
oner was remanded until the next session. 

No sooner was the judgment made known than more 
than sixty of the most respected citizens of Boston 
signed a petition to the court in Wheelwright's behalf. 
In respectful and even submissive language they 
pointed out the danger of meddling with the right of 

^ Wheelwright, Prince Soc. ed. p. 17, note 27. 
2 Winthrop, i. 215. Wheelwright, p. 18. 
8 Groom's Glass for New England, p. 7. 
< Felt's Ecd. Hist. ii. 611. 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 227 

free speech. " Paul was counted a pestilent fellow, or 
a moover of sedition, and a ringleader of a sect, . . . 
and Christ himselfe, as well as Paul, was charged to 
bee a teacher of New Doctrine. . . . Now wee beseech 
you, consider whether that old serpent work not after 
his old method, even in our daies." ^ 

The charge of sedition made against them they re- 
pudiated in emphatic words, which deserve attention, 
as they were afterwards held to be criminal. 

" Thirdly, if you look at the effects of his doctrine 
upon the hearers, it hath not stirred up sedition in us, 
not so much as by accident ; wee have not drawn the 
sword, as sometimes Peter did, rashly, neither have wee 
rescued our innocent brother, as sometimes the Israel- 
ites did Jonathan, and j'et they did not seditiously. 
The covenant of free grace held forth by our brother 
hath taught us rather to become humble suppliants 
to your worships, and if wee should not prevaile, wee 
would rather with patience give our cheekes to the 
smiters." ^ 

The liberal feeling ran so strongly in Boston that 
the conservatives thought it prudent to remove the 
government temporarily to Cambridge, that they might 
more easily control the election which was to come in 
May. Vane, with some petulance, refused to enter- 
tain the motion ; but Endicott put the question, and it 
was carried. As the time drew near the excitement 
increased, the clergy straining every nerve to bring up 

^ Wheelwright, Prince Soc. ed. p. 21. 
2 Idem. 



228 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

their voters from the country ; and on the morning of 
the day the feeling was so intense that the Rev. Mr. 
Wilson, forgetting his dignity and his age, scrambled 
up a tree and harangued the people from its branches.^ 

Yet, though the freemen were so deeply moved, 
there was no violence, and Winthrop was peaceably 
elected governor, with a strong conservative majority 
in the legislature. It so happened that just at this 
time a number of the friends of Wheelwright and the 
Hutchinsons were on their way from England to set- 
tle in Massachusetts. The first act of the new gov- 
ernment was to exclude these new-comers by passing 
a law forbidding any town to entertain strangers for 
more than three weeks without the consent of two of 
the magistrates. 

This oppressive statute caused such discontent that 
Winthrop thought it necessary to publish a defence, to 
which Vane replied and Winthrop rejoined. The con- 
troversy would long since have lost its interest had it 
not been for the theory then first advanced by Win- 
throp, that the corporation of Massachusetts, having 
bought its land, held it as though it were a private 
estate, and might exclude whom they pleased there- 
from ; and ever since this plea has been set up in jus- 
tification of every excess committed by the theocracy. 

Winthrop was a lawyer, and it is but justice to his 
reputation to presume that he spoke as a partisan, 
knowing his argument to be fallacious. As a legal 
proposition he must have been aware that it was un- 
sound. 

^ Hutch, Hist. i. 62, note. 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 229 

Although during the reign of Charles I. monopolies *^ 
were a standing grievance with the House of Commons, 
yet they had been granted and enforced for centuries ; 
and had Massachvisetts claimed the right to exclude 
strangers as interlopers in trade, she would have stood 
upon good precedent. Such, however, was not her con- 
tention. The legislation against the friends of Wheel- 
wright was passed avowedly upon grounds of religious 
difference of opinion, and a monopoly in religion was " 
unknown. y 

Her commercial privileges alone were exclusive, and, 
provided he respected them, a British subject had the 
same right to dwell in Massachusetts as in any of the 
other dominions of the crown, or, indeed, in any borough 
which held its land by grant, like Plymouth. To sub- 
ject Englishmen to restriction or punishment unknown 
to English law was as outrageous as the same act 
would have been had it been perpetrated by the city 
of London, — both corporations having a like power ^ 
to preserve the peace by local ordinances, and both be--^ 
ing controlled by the law of the land as administered '-^ 
by the courts. Such arguments as those advanced by 
Winthrop were only solemn quibbling to cloak an 
indefensible policy. To banish freemen for demand- 
ing liberty of conscience was a still more flagrant 
wrong. A precisely parallel case would have been 
presented had the directors of the East India Com- 
pany declared the membership of a proprietor to be 
forfeited, and ordered his stock to be sold, because 
he disapprovetl of enforcing conformity in worship ^ 
among inhabitants of the factories in Hindostan. 



230 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

Vane sailed early in August, and his departure 
cleared the last barrier from the way of vengeance. 
Proceedings were at once begun by a synod of all the 
ministers, which was held at Cambridge, for the pur- 
pose of restoring peace to the churches. " There were 
about eighty opinions, some blasphemous, others er- 
roneous, and all unsafe, condemned by the whole as- 
sembly. . . . Some of the church of Boston . . . were 
offended at the producing of so many errors, . . . 
and called to have the persons named which held those 
errors." To which the elders answered that all those 
opinions could be proved to be held by some, but it 
was not thought fit to name the parties. " Yet this 
would not satisfy some but they oft called for wit- 
nesses ; and because some of the magistrates declared 
to them . . . that if they would not forbear it would 
prove a civil disturbance . . . they objected. ... So 
as he " (probably meaning Winthrop) " was forced to 
tell one of them that if he would not forbear ... he 
might see it executed. Upon this some of Boston de- 
parted from the assembly and came no more." ^ Once 
freed from their repinings all went well, and their 
pastor, Mr. Wilson, soon had the satisfaction of send- 
ing their reputed heresies " to the devil of hell from 
whence they came." ^ Cotton, seeing that all was lost, 
hastened to make his peace by a submission which the 
Rev. Mr. Hubbard of Ipswich describes with uncon- 
scious cynicism. " If he were not convinced, yet he 

1 Winthrop, i. 238. 

2 Magnolia, bk. 3, ch. iii. § 13. 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 231 

was persuaded to an amicable compliance with the 
other ministers ; . . . for, although it was thought he 
did still retain his own sense and enjoy his own appre- 
hension in all or most of the things then controverted 
(as is manifest by some expressions of his . . . since 
that time published," . . .) yet. "By that means did 
that reverend and worthy minister of the gospel re- 
cover his former splendour throughout . . . New Eng- 
land." 1 

He was not a sensitive man, and having once deter- 
mined to do penance, he was far too astute a politician 
to do it by halves ; he not only gave himself up to the 
task of detecting the heterodoxy of his old friends,^ 
but on a day of solemn fasting he publicly professed 
repentance with many tears, and told how, " God leav- 
ing him for a time, he fell into a spirituall slumber ; 
and had it not been for the watchfulnesse of his 
brethren, the elders, &c., hee might have slept on, 
. . . and was very thankfull to his brethren for their 
watchfulnesse over him." ^ Nor to the end of his life 
did he feel quite at ease ; " yea, such was his ingenuity 
and piety as that his soul was not satisfied without 
often breaking forth into affectionate bewailing of his 
infirmity herein, in the publick assembly, sometimes 
in his prayer, sometimes in his sermon, and that with 
tears."* 

Wheelwright was made of sterner stuff, and was in« 

^ Hubbard, p. 302. 2 Wintbrop, i. 253. 

^ Hypocrisie Unmasked, p. 76. 
* Norton's Funeral Sermon, p. 37. 



232 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

flexible. In fact, however, the difference of dogma, if 
any existed, was trivial The clergy used the cry of 
heresy to excite odium, just as they called their oppo- 
nents Antinomians, or dangerous fanatics. To support 
these accusations the synod gravely accepted every un- 
savory inference which ingenuity could wring from the 
tenets of their adversaries ; and these, together with the 
fables invented by idle gossip, made up the long list 
of errors they condemned. Though the scheme was 
unprincipled, it met with complete success, and the 
Antinomians have come down to posterity branded as 
deadly enemies of Christ and the commonwealth ; yet 
nothing is more certain than that they were not only 
good citizens, but substantially orthodox. On such a 
point there is no one among the conservatives whose 
testimony has the weight of Winthrop's, who says: 
" Mr. Cotton . . . stated the differences in a very nar- 
row scantling ; and Mr. Shepherd, preaching at the 
day of election, brought them yet nearer, so as, except 
men of good understanding, and such as knew the 
bottom of the tenents of those of the other party, few 
could see where the difference was." ^ While Cotton 
himself complains bitterly of the falsehoods spread 
about him and his friends : " But when some of . . . 
the elders of neighbour churches advertised me of the 
evill report . . . I . . . dealt with Mrs. Hutchinson and 
others of them, declaring to them the erroneousnesse 
of those tenents, and the injury done to myself in fa- 
thering them upon mee. Both shee and they utterly 
1 Winthrop, i. 221. 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 233 

denyed that they held such tenents, or that they had 
fathered them upon mee. I returned their answer to 
the elders. . . . They answered nie they had but one 
witnesse, . . . and that one loth to be known." . . } 
Moreover, it is a remarkable fact that, notwithstanding 
the advantage it would have given the reactionists to 
have been able to fix subversive opinions upon their 
prominent opponents, it was found impossible to prove 
heresy in a single case which was brought to trial. The 
legislature chosen in May was apparently unfit for the 
work now to be done, for the extraordinary step of a 
dissolution was decided on, and a new election held, un- 
der circumstances in which it was easy to secure the 
return of suitable candidates. The session ojiened on 
November 2, and Wheelwright was summoned to ap- 
pear. He was ordered to submit, or prepare for sen- 
tence. He replied that he was guilty of neither sedition 
nor contempt ; that he had preached only the truth of 
Christ, the application of which was for others, not 
for him. " To which it was answered by the court 
that they had not censured his doctrine, but left it as 
it was ; but his application, by which hee laid the mag- 
istrates and ministers and most of the people of God 
in these churches under a covenant of works." ^ The 
prisoner was then sentenced to be disfranchised and 
banished. He demanded an appeal to the king; it 
was refused ; and he was given fourteen days to leave 
Massachusetts. So he went forth alone in the bit- 

1 Cotton, Way of New England Churches, pp. 39, 40. 

2 Short Story, p. 24. 



234 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

ter winter weather and journeyed to the Piscataqua, 
— yet " it was marvellous he got thither at that 
time, when they expelled him, by reason of the deep 
snow in which he might have perished."^ Nor was 
banishment by any means the trivial penalty it has 
been described. On the contrary, it was a punish- 
ment of the utmost rigor. The exiles were forced sud- 
denly to dispose of their property, which, in those 
times, was mostly in houses and land, and go forth 
among the savages with helpless women and children. 
Such an ordeal might well appall even a brave man ; 
but Wheelwright was sacrificing his intellectual life. 
He was leaving books, friends, and the mental activ- 
ity, which made the world to him, to settle in the 
forests among backwoodsmen ; and yet even in this 
desolate solitude the theocracy continued to pursue 
him with persevering hate. 

But there were others beside Wheelwright who had 
sinned, and some pretext had to be devised by which 
to reach them. The names of most of his friends 
were upon the petition that had been drawn up after 
his trial. It is true it was a proceeding with which 
the existing legislature was not concerned, since it had 
been presented to one of its predecessors ; it is also 
true that probably never, before or since, have men 
who have protested they have not drawn the sword 
rashly, but have come as humble suppliants to offer 
their cheeks to the smiters, been held to be public 
enemies. Such scruples, however, never hampered 

1 Wheelwright, Prince Soc. ed. Mercurius Americanus, p. 24. 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 235 

the theocracy. Their justice was trammelled neither 
by judges, by juries, nor by laws ; the petition was 
declared to be a seditious libel, and the petitioners 
were given their choice of disavowing their act and 
making humble submission, or exile. 

Aspinwall was at once disfranchised and banished.^ 
Coddington, Coggeshall, and nine more were given 
leave to depart within three months, or abide the 
action of the court ; others were disfranchised ; and 
fifty-eight of the less prominent of the party were 
disarmed in Boston alone.^ 

Thus were the early liberals crushed in Massachu-*^ 
setts ; the bold were exiled, the timid were terrified ; 
as a political organization they moved no more till the 
theocracy was tottering to its fall ; and for forty years ^ 
the power of the clergy was absolute in the land. 

The fate of Anne Hutchinson makes a fit ending to '^ 
this sad tale of oppression and of wrong. In Novem- 
ber, 1637, when her friends were crushed, and the tri- 
umphant priests felt that their victim's doom was sure, 
she was brought to trial before that ghastliest den of ^ 
human iniquity, an ecclesiastical criminal court. The 
ministers were her accusers, who came burning with 
hate to testify to the words she had spoken to them at ^ 
their own request, in the belief that the confidence she' 
reposed was to be held sacred. She had no jury to 
whose manhood she could appeal, and John Winthrop, 
to his lasting shame, was to prosecute her from the 
judgment seat. She was soon to become a mother, 

1 Mass. Rec. i. 1207. 2 Jdem, i. 223. 



236 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

and her health was feeble, but she was made to stand 
till she was exhausted ; and yet, abandoned and for- 
lorn, before those merciless judges, through two long, 
weary days of hunger and of cold, the intrepid woman 
defended her cause with a skill and courage which even 
now, after two hundred and fifty years, kindles the 
heart with admiration. The case for the government 
w^as opened by John Winthrop, the presiding justice, 
the attorney - general, the foreman of the jury, and 
the chief magistrate of Massachusetts Bay. He up- 
braided the prisoner with her many evil courses, with 
having spoken things prejudicial to the honor of the 
ministers, with holding an assembly in her house, and 
with divulging the opinions held by those who had 
been censured by that court ; closing in these words, 
which sound strangely in the mouth of a New England 
judge : — 

"We have thought good to send for you . . . that 
if you be in an erroneous way we may reduce you 
that so you may become a profitable member here 
among us, otherwise if you be obstinate . . . that then 
the court may take such course that you may trouble 
us no further, therefore I would entreat you . . . 
whether you do not justify Mr. Wheelwright's sermon 
and the petition. 

Mrs. H. I am called here to answer before you, 
but I hear no things laid to my charge. 

Gov. I have told you some already, and more 1 
ean tell you. 

Mrs. H. Name one, sir. 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 237 

Gov. Have I not named some already ? 

Mrs. H. What have I said or done ? . . . 

Gov. You have joined with them in the faction. 

Mrs. H. In what faction have I joined with them ? 

Gov. In presenting the petition. . . . 

Mrs. H. But I had not my hand to the petition. 

Gov. You have counselled them. 

Mrs. H. Wherein ? 

Gov. Why, in entertaining them. 

Mrs. H. What breach of law is that, sir? 

Gov. Why, dishonoring of parents. . . . 

Mrs. H. I may put honor upon them as the chil- 
dren of God and as they do honor the Lord. 

Gov. We do not mean to discourse with those of 
your sex but only this ; you do adhere unto them, and 
do endeavor to set forward this faction, and so you do 
dishonor us. 

Mrs. H. I do acknowledge no such thing, neither 
do I think that I ever put any dishonor upon you. 

And, on the whole, the chief justice broke down 
so hopelessly in his examination, that the deputy 
governor, or his senior associate upon the bench, 
thought it necessary to interfere. 

De'p. Gov. I would go a little higher with Mrs. 
Hutchinson. Now ... if she in particular hath dis- 
paraged all our ministers in the land that they have 
preached a covenant of works, and only Mr. Cotton a 
covenant of grace, why this is not to be suffered. . . 



238 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

Mrs. H. I pray, sir, prove it, that I said they 
preached nothing but a covenant of works. . . . 

Dej). Gov. If they do not preach a covenant of 
grace, clearly, then, they preach a covenant of works. 

Mrs. II. No, sir, one may preach a covenant of 
grace more clearly than another, so I said. 

Dudley was faring worse than Winthrop, and the 
divines, who had been bursting with impatience, could 
hold no longer. The Rev. Hugh Peters broke in : 
" That which concerns us to speak unto, as yet we are 
sparing in, unless the court command us to speak, 
then we shall answer to Mrs. Hutchinson, notwith- 
standing our brethren are very unwilling to answer." 
And without further urging, that meek servant of 
Christ went on to tell how he and others had heard 
that the prisoner said they taught a covenant of works, 
how they had sent for her, and though she was 
" very tender " at first, yet upon being begged to speak 
plainly, she had explained that there " was a broad 
difference between our Brother Mr. Cotton and our- 
selves. I desired to know the difference. She an- 
swered ' that he preaches the covenant of grace and 
you the covenant of works, and that you are not able 
' ministers of the New Testament, and know no more 
than the apostles did before the resurrection.' "... 

Mrs. H. If our pastor would shew his writings 
you should see what I said, and that many things are 
not so as is reported. 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 239 

Mr. Wilson. Sister Hutchinson, for the writings 
you speak of I have them not. . . . 

Five more divines followed, who, though they were 
" loth to speak in that assembly concerning that gentle- 
woman," yet to ease their consciences in " the relation 
wherein " they stood " to the Commonwealth and . . . 
unto God," felt constrained to state that the prisoner 
had said they were not able ministers of the New 
Testament, and that the whole of the evidence of 
Hugh Peters was true, and in so doing they came to 
an issue of veracity with Cotton. 

An adjournment soon followed till next day, and 
the presiding justice seems to have considered his case 
against his prisoner as closed. 

In the morning Mrs. Hutchinson opened her defence 
by calling three witnesses, Leverett, CoggeshaU, and 
John Cotton. 

Gov. Mr. CoggeshaU was not present. 

Mr. C. Yes, but I was, only I desired to be silent 
till I should be called. 

Gov. Will you . . . say that she did not say so ? 

Mr. C. Yes, I dare say that she did not say all 
that which they lay against her. 

Mr. Peters. How dare you look into the court to 
say such a word ? 

Mr. C. Mr. Peters takes upon him to forbid me. 
I shall be silent. . . . 

Gov. Well, Mr. Leverett, what were the words? 
I pray speak. 



240 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

Mr. L. To my best remembrance . . . Mr. Peters 
did with much vehemency and entreaty urge her to 
tell what difference there was between Mr. Cotton and 
them, and upon his urging of her she said : " The fear 
of man is a snare, but they that trust upon the Lord 
shall be safe." And . . . that they did not preach 
a covenant of grace so clearly as Mr. Cotton did, and 
she gave this reason of it, because that as the apostles 
were for a time without the Spirit so until they had 
received the witness of the Spirit they could not preach 
a covenant of grace so clearly. 

The Rev. John Cotton was then called. He was 
much embarrassed in giving his evidence, but, if he is 
to be believed, his brethren, in their anxiety to make 
out a case, had colored material facts. He closed his 
account of the interview in these words : " I must say 
that I did not find her saying they were under a cov- 
enant of works, nor that she said they did preach 
a covenant of works." 

Gov. You say you do not remember, but can you 
say she did not speak so? 

Mr. C. I do remember that she looked at them as 
the apostles before the ascension. . . . 

Dep. Gov. They affirm that Mrs. Hutchinson did 
say they were not able ministers of the New Testa- 
ment. 

Mr. C. I do not remember it. 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 241 

Mrs. Hutchinson had shattered the case of the gov- 
ernment in a style worthy of a leader of the bar, but 
she now ventured on a step for which she has been 
generally condemned. She herself approached the 
subject of her revelations. To criticise the introduc- 
tion of evidence is always simpler than to conduct a 
cause, but an analysis of her position tends to show 
not only that her course was the result of mature 
reflection, but that her judgment was in this instance 
correct. She probably assumed that when the more 
easily proved charges had broken down she would be 
attacked here ; and in this assumption she was un- 
doubtedly right. The alternative presented to her, 
therefore, was to go on herself, or wait for Winthrop 
to move. If she waited she knew she should give the 
government the advantage of choosing the ground, 
and she would thus be subjected to the danger of hav- 
ing fatal charges proved against her by hearsay or 
distorted evidence. If she took the bolder course, she 
could explain her revelations as monitions coming to 
her through texts in Scripture, and here she was cer- 
tain of Cotton's support. Before that tribunal she 
could hardly have hoped for an acquittal ; but if any- 
thing could have saved her it would have been the 
sanction given to her doctrines by the approval of 
John Cotton. At all events, she saw the danger, for 
she closed her little speech in these touching words : 
"Now if you do condemn me for speaking what in 
my conscience I know to be truth, I must commit my- 
self unto the Lord." 



242 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

Mr. Nowell. How do you know that that was the 
Spirit ? 

Mrs. H. How did Abraham know that it was 
God? . . . 

De'p. Gov. By an immediate voice. 

Mrs. H. So to me by an immediate revelation. 

Then she proceeded to state how, through various 
texts which she cited, the Lord showed her what He 
would do; and she particularly dwelt on one from 
Daniel. So far all was well ; she had planted herself 
on ground upon which orthodox opinion was at least 
divided ; but she now committed the one grave error 
of her long and able defence. As she went on her 
excitement gained upon her, and she ended by some- 
thing like a defiance and denunciation : " You have 
power over my body, but the Lord Jesus hath power 
over my body and soul ; and assure yourselves thus 
much, you do as much as in you lies to put the Lord 
Jesus Christ from you, and if you go on in this course 
you begin, you will bring a curse upon you and your 
posterity, and the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." 

Gov. Daniel was delivered by miracle. Do you 
think to be delivered so too ? 

Mrs. H. I do here speak it before the court. I 
look that the Lord should deliver me by his provi- 
dence. . . . 

Dej). Gov. I desire Mr. Cotton to tell us whether 
you do approve of Mrs. Hutchinson's revelations as 
she hath laid them down. 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 243 

Mr. C. I know not whether I do understand her, 
but this I say, if she doth expect a deliverance in a 
way of providence, then I cannot deny it. 

Gov. ... I see a marvellous providence of God 
to bring things to this pass. . . . God by a providence 
hath answered our desires, and made her to lay open 
herself and the around of all these disturbances to be 
by revelations. . . . 

Court. We all consent with you. 

Gov. Ey, it is the most desperate enthusiasm in 
the world. . . . 

Mr. Endicott. I speak in reference to Mr. Cotton. 
. . . Whether do you witness for her or against her. 

Mr. C. This is that I said, sir, and my answer is 
plain, that if she doth look for deliverance from the 
hand of God by his providence, and the revelation be 
. . . according to a word [of Scripture] that I cannot 
deny. 

Mr. Endicott. You give me satisfaction. 

Dep. Gov. No, no, he gives me none at all. . . . 

Mr. C. I pray, sir, give me leave to express my- 
self. In that sense that she speaks I dare not bear 
witness against it. 

31r. Nowell. I think it is a devilish delusion. 

Gov. Of all the revelations that ever I read of I 
never read the like ground laid as is for this. The 
enthusiasts and Anabaptists had never the like. . . . 

Mr. Peters. I can say the same . . . and I think 
that is very disputable which our brother Cotton hath 
spoken. . . . 



244 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

Gov. I am persuaded that the revelation she brings 
forth is delusion. 

All the court but some two or three ministers cry 
out, We all believe it, we all believe it. . . . 

And then Coddington stood up before that angry- 
meeting like the brave man he was, and said, " I be- 
seech you do not speak so to force things along, for 
I do not for my own part see any equity in the court 
in all your proceedings. Here is no law of God that 
she hath broken, nor any law of the country that she 
hath broke, and therefore deserves no censure ; and if 
she say that the elders preach as the apostles did, why 
they preached a covenant of grace and what wrong is 
that to them, . . . therefore I pray consider, what you 
do, for here is no law of God or man broken." 

Mr. Peters. I profess I thought Mr. Cotton would 
never have took her part. 

Gov. The court hath already declared themselves 
satisfied . . . concerning the troublesomeness of her 
spirit and the danger of her course amongst us which 
is not to be suffered. Therefore if it be the mind of 
the court that Mrs. Hutchinson . . . shall be banished 
out of our liberties and imprisoned till she be sent 
away let them hold up their hands. 

All but three consented. 

Those contrary minded hold up yours. Mr. Cod- 
dington and Colburn only. 



1/ 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 245 

Gov. Mrs. Hutchinson, the sentence of the court 
you hear is that you are banished from out of our 
jurisdiction as being a woman not fit for our society, 
and are to be imprisoned till the court shall send 
you away. 

Mrs. H. I desire to know wherefore I am ban- 
ished. 

Gov. Say no more, the court knows wherefore and 
is satisfied.^ 

With refined malice she was committed to the cus- 
tody of Joseph Welde of Roxbury, the brother of the 
Rev. Thomas Welde who thought her a Jezebel. 
Here " divers of the elders resorted to her," and un- 
der this daily torment rapid progress was made. 
Probably during that terrible interval her reason was 
tottering, for her talk came to resemble ravings.^ 
When this point was reached the divines saw their 
object attained, and that " with sad hearts " they could 
give her up to Satan. ^ Accordingly they " wrote to 
the church at Boston, offering to make proof of the 
same," whereupon she was summoned and the lecture 
appointed to begin at ten o'clock.^ 

''When she was come one of the ruling elders 
called her forth before the assembly," and read to 
her the twenty-nine errors of which she was accused, 
all of which she admitted she had maintained. " Then 
she asked by what rule such an elder would come to 

1 Hutch. Hist. vol. ii. App. 2. ^ Brief Apologie, p. 59. 

* Winthrop, i. 254. 



246 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

her pretending to desire light and indeede to entrappe 
her." He answered that he came not to " entrap her 
but in compassion to her soule. . . ." 

" Then presently she grew into passion . . . pro- 
fessing withall that she held none of these things 
. . . before her imprisonment." ^ 

The court sat till eight at night, when " Mr. Cot- 
ton pronounced the sentence of admonition . . . with 
much zeal and detestation of her errors and pride of 
spirit." 2 An adjournment was then agreed on for a 
week and she was ordered to return to Roxbury ; but 
this was more than she could bear, and her distress 
was such that the congregation seem to have felt some 
touch of compassion, for she was committed to the 
charge of Cotton till the next lecture day, when the 
trial was to be resumed.^ At his house her mind re- 
covered its tone and when she again appeared she not 
only retracted the wild opinions she had broached 
while at Joseph Welde's, but admitted " that what she 
had spoken against the magistrates at the court (by 
way of revelation) was rash and ungrounded." * 

But nothing could avail her. She was in the hands 
o:' men determined to make her expiation of her 
crimes a by-word of terror ; her fate was sealed. The 
doctrines she now professed were less objectionable, 
so she was examined as to former errors, among others 
" that she had denied inherent righteousness ; " she 
" affirmed that it was never her judgment ; and though 

1 Brief Apol. pp. 59-61. ^ Winthrop, i. 256. 

8 Brief Apol. p. 62. * Winthrop, i. 258. 



\" 



THE ANTINOMIANS. 247 

it was proved by many testimonies . . . yet she im- 
pudently persisted in her affirmation to the astonish- 
ment of all the assembly. So that . . . the church 
with one consent cast her out. . . . After she was ex- 
communicated her spirit, which seemed before to be 
somewhat dejected, revived again and she gloried in 
her sufferings." ^ And all this time she had been 
alone ; her friends were far away. 

That no circumstances of horror might be lost, she 
and one of her most devoted followers, Mary Dyer, 
were nearing their confinements during this time of 
misery. Both cases ended in misfortunes over whose 
sickening details Thomas Welde and his reverend 
brethren gloated with a savage joy, declaring that 
" God himselfe was pleased to step in with his casting 
vote ... as clearly as if he had pointed with his 
finger." ^ Let posterity draw a veil over the shocking 
scene. 

Two or three days after her condemnation " the gov- 
ernor sent [her] a warrant ... to depart . . . she 
went by water to her farm at the Mount . . . and so 
to the island in the Narragansett Bay which her hus- 
)and and the rest of that sect had purchased of the 
Indians." ^ 

This pure and noble but most unhappy woman had 
sinned against the clergy, past forgiveness here or here- 
after. They gibbeted her as Jezebel, and her name 
became a reproach in Massachusetts through two 

1 Winthrop, i. 258. 2 Short Story, Preface, § 5. 

8 Wiuthrop, i. 259. 



248 THE ANTINOMIANS. 

hundred years. But her crimes and the awful end- 
ing of her life are best read in the Christian words 
of the Rev. Thomas Welde, whose gentle spirit so 
adorned his holy office. 

" For the servants of God who came over into New 
England . . . seeing their ministery was a most pre- 
cious sweete savour to all the saints before she came 
hither, it is easie to discerne from what sinke that ill 
vapour hath risen which hath made so many of her 
seduced party to loath now the smell of those flowers 
which they were wont to find sweetnesse in.^ . . . 
The Indians set upon them, and slew her and all the 
family.^ . . . Some write that the Indians did burne 
her to death with fire, her house and all the rest 
named that belonged to her ; but I am not able to 
affirme by what kind of death they slew her, but slaine 
it seemes she is, according to all reports. I never heard 
that the Indians in those parts did ever before this, 
commit the like outrage . . . ; and therefore God's 
hand is the more apparently scene herein, to pick out 
this wofull woman, to make her and those belonging 
to her, an unheard of heavie example of their cruelty 
above al others." ^ 



/i 



^ Short Story, p. 40. 

2 Mrs. Hutchinson and her family were killed in a general 
massacre of the Dutch and English by the Indians on Long Isl- 
and. Winthrop, ii. 136. 

8 Short Story, Preface. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 

With the ruin of the Antinomians, opposition to 
the clergy ceased within the church itself, but many- 
causes combined to prevent the bulk of the people 
from participating in the communion. Of those who 
were excluded, perhaps even the majority might have 
found it impossible to have secured their pastor's ap- 
probation, but numbers who would have been gladly 
received were restrained by conscientious scruples ; 
and more shrank from undergoing the ordeal to which 
they would have been obliged to submit. It was no 
light matter for a pious but a sincerely honest man to 
profess his conversion, and how God had been pleased 
to work " in the inward parts of his soul," when he 
was not absolutely certain that he had indeed been 
^^sited by the Spirit. And it is no exaggeration to say 
r^git to sensitive natures the initiation was appalling. 
The applicant had first to convince the minister of his 
worthiness, then his name was openly propounded, and 
those who knew of any objection to his character, 
either moral or religious, were asked to give notice to 
the presbytery of elders. If the candidate succeeded 
in passing this private examination as to his fitness 
the following scene took place in church : — 



250 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 

" The party appearing in the midst of the assembly 
. . . the ruling elder speaketh in this manner : Breth- 
ren of this congregation, this man or woman . . . hath 
beene heretofore propounded to you, desiring to enter 
into church fellowship with us, and we have not since 
that heard anything from any of you to the contrary 
of the parties admittance but that we may goe on to 
receive him : therefore now, if any of you know any- 
thing against him, why he may not be admitted, you 
may yet speak. . . . Whereupon, sometimes men do 
speak to the contrary . . . and so stay the party for 
that time also till this new offence be heard before 
the elders, so that sometimes there is a space of divers 
moneths between a parties first propounding and re- 
ceiving, and some are so bashfuU as that they choose 
rather to goe without the communion than undergoe 
such publique confessions and tryals, but that is held 
their fault." ^ 

Those who were thus disfranchised, Lechford, who 
knew what he was talking about, goes on to say, soon 
began to complain that they were " ruled like slaves ; " 
and there can be no doubt that they had to submit to 
very substantial grievances. The administration of 
justice especially seems to have been defective. " Now 
the most of the persons at New England are not ad- 
mitted of their church, and therefore are not freemen, 
and when they come to be tryed there, be it for life or 
limb, name or estate, or whatsoever, they must bee tryed 
and judged too by those of the church, who are in a 
^ Lechford, Plain Dealing, pp. 6, 7. 



THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 251 

sort their adversaries : how equall that hath been, or 
may be, some by experience doe know, others may 
judge." 1 

The government was in fact in the hands of a small 
oligarchy of saints,^ who were, in their turn, ruled by 
their priests, and as the repression of thought inevita- 
ble under such a system had roused the Antinomians, 
who were voters, to demand a larger intellectual free- 
dom, so the denial of ordinary political rights to the 
majority led to discontent. 

Since under the theocracy there was no department 
of human affairs in which the clergy did not meddle, 
they undertook as a matter of course to interfere with 
the militia, and the following curious letter written to 
the magistrates by the ministers of Rowley shows how 
far they carried their supervision even so late as 1689. 

Rowley, July 24th, 1689. 
May it iilease your honors^ 

The occasion of these lines is to inform you that 
whereas our military company have nominated Abel 
Platts, for ensign, we conceive that it is our duty to 
declare that we cannot approve of their choice in that 
he is corrupt in his judgment with reference to the 
Lord's Supper, declaring against Christ's words of 
justification, and hereupon hath withdrawn himself 
from communion with the church in that holy ordi- 
nance some years, besides some other things wherein 

^ Plain Dealing, p. 23. 

^ " Three parts of the people of the country remaiue out of 
the church." Plain Dealing, p. 73. A. d. 1642. 



252 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 

he hath shown no little vanity in his conversation and 
hath demeaned himself unbecomingly toward the 
word and toward the dispensers of it. . . . 

Samuel Phillips. 

Edward Paison.^ 

A somewhat similar difficulty, which happened in 
Hingham in 1645, produced very serious consequences. 
A new captain had been chosen for their company ; 
but a dispute having arisen, the magistrates, on the 
question being submitted to them, set the election aside 
and directed the old officers to keep their places until 
the General Court should meet. Notwithstanding 
this order the commotion continued to increase, and 
the pastor, Mr. Peter Hubbert, " was very forward to 
have excommunicated the lieutenant," who was the 
candidate the magistrates favored.^ Winthrop hap- 
pened to be deputy governor that year, and the ag- 
grieved officer applied to him for protection ; where- 
upon, as the defendants seemed inclined to be recal- 
citrant, several were committed in open court, among 
whom were three of Mr. Hubbert's brothers. 

Forthwith the clergyman in great wrath headed a 
petition to which he obtained a large number of sig- 
natures, in which he prayed the General Court to take 
cognizance of the cause, since it concerned the public 
liberty and the liberty of the church. 

At its next session, the legislature proceeded to ex- 
amine the whole case, and Winthrop was brought to 

1 History of Newbury, p. 80. 2 Winthrop, ii. 222, 223. 






THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 253 

trial for exceeding his jurisdiction as a magistrate. A 
contest ensued between the deputies and assistants, 
which was finally decided by the influence of the 
elders. The result was that Winthrop was acquit- 
ted and Mr. Hubbert and the chief petitioners were 
fined.^ 

In March the constable went to Hingham to collect 
the money ,^ but he found the minister indisposed to 
submit in silence. About thirty people had collected, 
and before them all Mr. Hubbert demanded the war- 
rant ; when it was produced he declared it worthless 
because not in the king's name, and then went on to 
add that the government " was not more then a cor- 
poration in England, and . . . had not power to put 
men to death . . . that for himself he had neither horn 
nor hoofe of his own, nor anything wherewith to buy 
his children cloaths ... if he must pay the fine he 
would pay it in books, but that he knew not for what 
they were fined, unlesse it were for petitioning : and 
if they were so waspish they might not be petitioned, 
then he could not tell what to say." ^ 

Unluckily for Mr. Hubbert he had taken the popu- 
lar side in this dispute and had thus been sundered 
from his brethren, who sustained Winthrop, and in the 
end carried him through in triumph ; and not only 
this, but he was suspected of Presbyterian tendencies, 
and a committee of the elders who had visited Hing- 
ham to reconcile some differences in the congregation 

1 Winthrop, ii. 227. 2 1645-46, 18 March. 

* New Eng. Jonas, Marvin's ed. p. 5. 



254 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 

had found him in grave fault. The government waB 
not sorry, therefore, to make him a public example, 
as appeared not only by these proceedings, but by the 
way he was treated in the General Court the next 
autumn. He was accordingly indicted for sedition, 
tried and convicted in June, fined twenty pounds, and 
bound over to good behavior in forty pounds more.^ 
Such a disturbance as this seems to have been all that 
was needed to bring the latent discontent to a focus. 

William Vassal had been an original patentee and 
was a member of the first Board of Assistants, who 
were appointed by the king. Being, however, a man 
of liberal views he had not found Massachusetts con- 
genial ; he had returned to England after a stay of 
only a month, and when he came again to America in 
1635, he had settled at Scituate, the town adjoining 
Hingham, but in the Plymouth jurisdiction. Having 
both wealth and social position he possessed great influ- 
ence, and he now determined to lead an agitation for 
equal rights and liberty of conscience in both colonies 
at once, by petitioning the legislatures, and in case of 
failure there, presenting similar petitions to Parlia- 
ment. 

Bradford was this year ^ governor of Plymouth, 
and Edward Win slow was an assistant. Winslow 
himself had been governor repeatedly, was a thor- 
ough-going churchman, and deep in all the coun- 
cils of the conservative party. There was, however, 
no religious qualification for the suffrage in the old 
i New Eng. Jonas, p. 6. 2 June, 1646. ^ 1^45. 



THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 255 

colony, and the complexion of its politics was there- 
fore far more liberal than in Massachusetts ; so Vas- 
sal was able to command a strong support when he 
brought forward his proposition. Winslow, writing to 
his friend Winthrop at Boston, gives an amusing ac- 
count of his own and Bradford's consternation, and the 
expedients to which they were forced to resort in the 
legislature to stave off a vote upon the petition, when 
Vassal made his motion in October, 1645. 

" After this, the first excepter [Vassal] having been 
observed to tender the view of a scroule from man to 
man, it came at length to be tendered to myself, and 
withall, said he, it may be you will not like this. 
Having read it, I told him I utterly abhorred it as 
such as would make us odious to all Christian com. 
monweales : But at length he told the governor 
[Bradford] he had a written proposition to be pro- 
pounded to the court, which he desired the court to 
take into consideration, and according to order, if 
thought meet, to be allowed : To this the deputies 
were most made beforehand, and the other three as- 
sistants, who applauded it as their Diana ; and the 
sum of it was, to allow and maintaine full and free 
tollerance of religion to all men that would preserve 
the civill peace and submit unto government ; and 
there was no limitation or exception against Turke, 
Jew, Papist, Arian, Socinian, Nicholaytan, Familist, 
or any other, &c. But our governor and divers of us 
having expressed the sad consequences would follow, 
especially myselfe and Mr. Prence, yet notwithstand- 



256 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 

ing it was required, according to order, to be voted : 
But tlie governor would not suffer it to come to vote, 
as being that indeed would eate out the power of God- 
lines, &c. . . . You would have admired to have seen 
how sweet this carrion relished to the pallate of most 
of the deputies ! What will be the issue of these 
things, our all ordering God onely knows. . . . But if 
he have such a judgment for this place, I trust we 
shall finde (I speake for many of us that groane un- 
der these things) a resting place among you for the 
soales of our feet." ^ 

As just then nothing more could be done in Plym- 
outh, proceedings were transferred to Massachusetts. 
Samuel Maverick is a bright patch of color on the sad 
Puritan background. He had a dwelling at Winnisime, 
that "in the yeare 1625 I fortified with a pillizado 
and fflankers and gunnes both belowe and above in 
them which awed the Indians who at that time had a 
mind to cutt off the English." ^ When Winthrop 
landed, he found him keeping open house, so kindly 
and freehanded that even the grim Johnson relaxes 
when he speaks of him : " a man of very loving and 
curteous behaviour, very ready to entertaine stran- 
gers, yet an enemy to the reformation in hand, being 
strong for the lordly prelatical power." ^ 

This genial English churchman entertained every 
one at his home on Noddle's Island, which is now 

1 Hutch. Colli Prince Soc. ed. i. 174. 

2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Oct. 1884, p. 236. 
8 Wonder -Working Providence, Poole's ed. p. 37. 



THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 257 

East Boston : Vane and Lord Ley, and La Tour when 
he came to Boston ruined, and even Owen when he 
ran off with another man's wife, and so brought a fine 
of £100 on his host. Josselyn says with much feeling: 
" I went a shore upon Noddles Island to Mr. Samuel 
Maverick, . . . the only hospitable man in the whole 
countrey.'' He was charitable also, and Winthrop re- 
lates how, when the Indians were dying of the small- 
pox, he, "his wife and servants, went daily to them, 
ministered to their necessities, and buried their dead, 
and took home many of their children." He was 
generous, too, with his wealth; and when the town 
had to rebuild the fort on Castle Island much of the 
money came from him. 

But, as Endicott told the Browns, when he shipped 
them to England, because their practice in adhering 
to their Episcopal orders tended to " mutiny," " New 
England was no place for such as they." One by one 
they had gone, — the Browns first, and afterward 
William Blackstone, who had found it best to leave 
Boston because he could not join the church ; and now 
the pressure on Maverick began to make him restive. 
Though he had been admitted a freeman in the early 
days, he was excluded from all offices of importance ; 
he was taxed to support a church of which he disap- 
proved, yet was forced to attend, though it would not 
baptize his children ; and he was so suspected that, in 
March, 1635, he had been ordered to remove to Boston, 
and was forbidden to lodge strangers for more than 
one night without leave from a magistrate. Under 



258 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 

such circumstances he could not but sympathize with 
Vassal in his effort to win for all men equal rights be- 
fore the law. Next after him in consequence was Dr. 
Robert Childe, who had taken a degree at Padua, and 
who, though not a freeman, had considerable interests 
in the country, — a man of property and standing. 
There were five more signers of the petition : Thomas 
Burton, John Smith, David Yale, Thomas Fowle, and 
John Dand, but they do not require particular notice. 
They prayed that " civil liberty and freedome be 
forthwith granted to all truly English, equall to the 
rest of their countrymen, as in all plantations is ac- 
customed to be done, and as all free-borne enjoy in 
our native country. . . . Further that none of the 
English nation ... be banished unlesse they break 
the known lawes of England. . . . We therefore 
humbly intreat you, in whose hands it is to help . . . 
for the glory of God ... to give liberty to the mem- 
bers of the churches of England not scandalous in 
their lives . . . to be taken into your congregations, 
and to enjoy with you all those liberties and ordi- 
nances Christ hath purchased for them, and into 
whose name they are baptized ... or otherwise to 
grant liberty to settle themselves here in a church 
way according to the best reformations of England 
and Scotland. If not, we and they shall be neces- 
sitated to apply our humble desires to the Hoftorable 
Houses of Parliament." ^ 

This petition was presented to the court on May 
1 New Eng. Jonas, Marvin's ed. pp. 13-15. 



THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 259 

19, 1646 ; but the session was near its close, and it 
was thought best to take no immediate steps. The 
elders, however, became satisfied that the moment had 
come for a thorough organization of the church, and 
they therefore caused the legislature to issue a general 
invitation to all the congregations to send representa- 
tives to a synod to be held at Cambridge. But not- 
withstanding the inaction of the authorities, the clergy- 
were perfectly aware of the danger, and they passed 
the summer in creating the necessary indignation 
among the voters : they bitterly denounced from their 
pulpits " the sons of Belial, Judasses, sons of Corah," 
"with sundry appellations of that nature . . . which 
seemed not to arise from a gospel spirit." Some- 
times they devoted " a whole sermon, and that not very 
short," to describing the impending ruin and exhort- 
ing the magistrates " to lay hold upon " the offenders.^ 
Winthrop had been chosen governor in May, and, 
when the legislature met in October, he was made 
chairman of a committee to draft an answer to Childe. 
This document may be found in Hutchinson's Collec- 
tion. As a state paper devoted to the discussion of 
questions of constitutional law it has little merit, but 
it may have been effective as a party manifesto. A 
short adjournment followed till November, when, on 
reassembling, the elders were asked for their advice 
upon this absorbing topic. 

" Mr. Hubbard of Hingham came with the rest, but 
the court being informed that he had an hand in a pe- 
^ New Eng. Jonas, Marvin's ed. p. 19. 



2G0 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 

tition, which Mr. Vassall carried into England against 
tlie country in general, th(; governour propounded, that 
if any elder present had any such hand, &c., he would 
withdraw himself." Mr. Hubbert sitting still a good 
space, one of the deputies stated that he was suspected, 
whereupon he rose and said he knew nothing of such 
a petition. 

Then Winthrop replied that he "must needs deliver 
his mind about him," and though he had no proof 
about the pc^tition, " yet in regard he had so much 
opposed authority and offered such contempt to it, 
... he thought he would (in discretion) withdraw 
himself, &c., whereupon he went out." ^ 

The ministers who remained then proceeded to de- 
fine the relations of Massachusetts toward England, 
and the position they assumed was very simple. 

" I. We depend upon the state of England for pro- 
tection and immunities of Englishmen. ... II. We 
conceive ... we have granted by patent such full and 
ample power ... of making all laws and rules of our 
obedience, and of a full and final determination of all 
cases in the administration of justice, that no appeals 
or other ways of interrupting our proceedings do lie 
against us." ^ 

In other words, they were to enjoy the privileges 
and safeguards of British subjects without yielding 
obedience to British law. 

Under popular governments the remedy for discon- 
tent is free discussion ; under despotisms it is repres- 
1 Winthrop, ii. 278. ^ Winthrop, ii. 282. 



THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 261 

sion. In Massachusetts energetic steps were promptly 
taken to punish the ring-leaders in what the court 
now dechired to be a conspiracy. The petitioners 
were summoned, and on being questioned refused to 
answer until some charge was made. A hot alterca- 
tion followed, which ended in the defendants tender- 
ing an ap[)cal, which was refused ; and they were com- 
mitted for trial.' A species of in(li(;tment was then 
prepared in which they were charged with puldishing 
seditious libels against the Church of Christ and the 
civil government. The gravamen of the offence was 
the attempt to persuade the people " that the liberties 
and privileges in our charter belong t^> all freeborn 
Englishmen inhabitants here, whereas they are granted 
only to such as the governour and company shall think 
fit to receive into that fellowsliip." ^ The appeal was 
held criminal because a denial of the jurisdiction of 
the government. The trial resembled Wheelwright's. 
Like him the defendants refused to make submission, 
but persisted " obstinately and proudly in their evil 
practice ; " that is to say, they maintained the right of 
petition and the legality of their course. They were 
therefore fined : Childe £50 ; Smith X40 ; Maverick, 
because he had not yet appeahMl, XIO ; and the others 
<£30 each ; three magistrates dissented. 

Childe at once began hasty preparations to sail. 
To prevent him Winthrop (;alled the assistants to- 
gether, without, however, giving the dissenting magis- 
trates notice, and arranged to have him arrested and 
searched. 

1 Winthrop, ii. 28.j. * Idem. 



262 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 

One striking characteristic of the theocracy was its 
love for inflicting mental suffering upon its victims. 
The same malicious vindictiveness which sent Morton 
to sea in sight of his blazing home, and which impris- 
oned Anne Hutchinson in the house of her bitterest 
enemy, now suggested a scheme for making Childe 
endure the pangs of disappointment, by allowing him 
to embark, and then seizing him as the ship was set- 
ting sail. And though the plan miscarried, and the 
arrest had to be made the night before, yet even as it 
was the prisoner took his confinement very " griev- 
ously, but he could not help it." ^ 

Nothing criminating was found in his possession, 
but in Dand's study, which was ransacked, copies of 
two petitions were discovered, with a number of que- 
ries relating to certain legal aspects of the charter, and 
intended to be submitted to the Commissioners for the 
Plantations at London. 

These petitions were substantially those already 
presented, except that, by way of preamble, the story 
of the trial was told ; and how the ministers " did re- 
vile them, &c., as far as the wit or malice of man 
could, and that they meddled in civil affaires beyond 
their calling, and were masters rather than ministers, 
and ofttimes judges, and that they had stirred up the 
magistrates against them, and that a day of humilia- 
tion was appointed, wherein they were to pray against 
them." 2 

Such words had never been heard in Massachusetts. 

1 Winthrop, ii. 294. ^ Winthrop, ii. 293. 



THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 263 

The saints were aghast. Winthrop speaks of the of- 
fence as " being in nature capital," and Johnson 
thought the Lord's gracious goodness alone quelled 
this malice against his people. 

Of course no mercy was shown. It is true that the 
writings were lawful petitions by English subjects to 
Parliament ; that, moreover, they had never been pub- 
lished, 'but were found in a private room by means of 
a despotic search. Several of the signers were im- 
prisoned for six months and then were punished in 
May: — 

Doctor Childe, (imprisonment till paid,) £200 

John Smith, " " " 100 

John Dand, « " " 200 

Tho. Burton, " " " 100 

Samuel Maverick, for his offence in being pty 
to y* conspiracy, (imprison- 
ment till paid,) 100 
Samuel Maverick, ffor his offence in breaking his 
oath and in appealing ag°^' y^ 
intent of his oath of a freeman, 50 ^ 

The conspirators of the poorer class were treated 
with scant ceremony. A carpenter named Joy was in 
Dand's study when the officers entered. He asked if 
the warrant was in the king's name. " He was laid 
hold on, and kept in irons about four or five days, and 
then he humbled himself . . . for meddling in matters 
belonging not to him, and blessed God for these irons 

1 Masts. Rec. iii. 113. May 26, 1647. £200 was the equivalent 
of about 85,000. 



264 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 

upon his legs, hoping they should do him good while 
he lived." ^ 

But though the government could oppress the men, 
they could not make their principles unpopular, and 
the next December after Vassal and his friends had 
left the colony, the orthodox Samuel Symonds of Ips- 
wich wrote mournfully to Winthrop : " I am informed 
that coppies of the petition are spreading here, and 
divers (specially young men and women) are taken 
with it, and are apt to wonder why such men should 
be troubled that speake as they doe : not being able 
suddenly to discerne the poyson in the sweet wine, nor 
the fire wrapped up in the straw." ^ The petitioners, 
however, never found redress. Edward Win slow had 
been sent to London as agent, and in 1648 he was 
able to write that their " hopes and endeavours . . . 
had been blasted by the special providence of the 
Lord who still wrought for us." And Winthrop pi- 
ously adds : " As for those who went over to pro- 
cure us trouble, God met with them all. Mr. Vas- 
sall, finding no entertainment for his petitions, went 
to Barbadoes," ^ . . . " God had brought " Thomas 
Fowle " very low, both in his estate and in his rep- 
utation, since he joined in the first petition." And 
" God had so blasted " Childe's " estate as he was 
quite broken." ^ 

Maverick remained some years in Boston, being 
probably unable to abandon his property ; during this 

1 Winthrop, ii. 294. 2 Felt's Ecd. Hist. i. 593. 

8 Winthrop, ii. 321. * Winthrop, ii. 322. 



THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 265 

interval he made several efforts to have his fine re- 
mitted, and he did finally secure an abatement of one 
half. He then went to England and long aftervard 
came back as a royal commissioner to try his fortune 
once again in a contest with the theocracy. 

Dr. Palfrey has described this movement as a plot 
to introduce a direct government by England by in- 
ducing Parliament to establish Presbyterianism. By 
other than theological reasoning this inference cannot 
be deduced from the evidence. All that is certainly 
known about the leaders is that they were not of any 
one denomination. Maverick was an Episcopalian ; 
Vassal was probably an Independent like Cromwell 
or Milton ; and though the elders accused Childe of 
being a Jesuit, there is some ground to suppose that 
he inclined toward Geneva. So far as the testimony 
goes, everything tends to prove that the petitioners 
were perfectly sincere in their effort to gain some 
small measure of civil and religious liberty for them- 
selves and for the disfranchised majority. 

Viewed from the standpoint of history and not of 
prejudice, the events of these early years present them- 
selves in a striking and unmistakable sequence. 

They are the phenomena that regularly attend a cer- 
tain stage of human development, — the absorption of 
power by an aristocracy. The clergy's rule was rigid, 
and met with resistance, which was crushed with an 
iron hand. Was it defection from their own ranks, 
the deserters met the fate of Wheelwright, of Wil- 
liams, of Cotton, or of Hubbert ; were politicians con- 



266 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 

tumacious, they were defeated or exiled, like Vane, 
or Aspinwall, or Coddington ; were citizens discon- 
tented, ttey were coerced like Maverick and Childe. 
The process had been uninterrupted alike in church 
and state. The congregations, which in theory should 
have included all the inhabitants of the towns, had 
shrunk until they contained only a third or a quar- 
ter of the people ; while the churches themselves, 
which were supposed to be independent of external 
interference and to regulate their affairs by the will 
of the majority, had become little more than the chat- 
tels of the priests, and subject to the control of the 
magistrates who were their representatives. This 
system has generally prevailed ; in like manner the 
Inquisition made use of the secular arm. The condi- 
tion of ecclesiastical affairs is thus described by the 
highest living authority on Congregationalism : — 

" Our fathers laid it down — and with perfect 
truth — that the will of Christ, and not the will of 
the major or minor part of a church, ought to gov- 
ern that church. But somebody must interpret that 
will. And they quietly assumed that Christ would 
reveal his will to the elders, but would not reveal it 
to the church-members ; so that when there arose a 
difference of opinion as to what the Master's will 
might be touching any particular matter, the judg- 
ment of the elders, rather than the judgment even of 
a majority of the membership, must be taken as con- 
clusive. To all intents and purposes, then, this was 
precisely the aristocracy which they affirmed that it 



THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 267 

was not. For the elders were to order business in the 
assurance that every truly humble and sincere mem- 
ber would consent thereto. If any did not consent, 
and after patient debate remained of another judg- 
ment, he was ' partial ' and ' factious,' and continu- 
ing ' obstinate,' he was ' admonished ' and his vote 
' nullified ; ' so that the elders could have their way 
in the end by merely adding the insult of the ap- 
parent but illusive offer of cooperation to the injury 
of their absolute control. As Samuel Stone of Hart- 
ford no more tersely than truly put it, this kind of 
Congregationalism was simply a ' speaking Aristoc- 
racy in the face of a silent Democracy.' " ^ 

It is true that Vassal's petition was the event which 
made the ministers decide to call a synod ^ by means 
of an invitation of the General Court ; but it is also 
certain that under no circumstances would the meet- 
ing of some such council have been long delayed. 
For sixteen years the well-known process had been 
going on, of the creation of institutions by custom, 
having the force of law ; the stage of development 
had now been reached when it was necessary that 
those usages should take the shape of formal enact- 
ments. The Cambridge platform therefore marks the 
completion of an organization, and as such is the cen- 
tral point in the history of the Puritan Common- 
wealth. The work was done in August, 1648 : the 

^ Early New England Congregationalism, as seen in its Litera- 
ture, p. 429. Dr. Dexter. 
2 Winthrop, ii. 264. 



y 



268 



THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 



Westminster Confession was promulgated as the 
creed ; the powers of the clergy were minutely de- 
fined, and the duty of the laity stated to be " obeying 
their elders and submitting themselves unto them in 
the Lord." ^ The magistrate was enjoined to punish 
" idolatry, blasphemy, heresy," and to coerce any 
church becoming " schismatical." 

In October, 1649, the court commended the plat- 
form to the consideration of the congregations ; in 
October, 1651, it was adopted ; and when church and 
state were thus united by statute the theocracy was 
complete. 

The close of the era of construction is also marked 
by the death of those two remarkable men whose in- 
fluence has left the deepest imprint upon the institu- 
tions they helped to mould : John Winthrop, who died 
in 1649, and John Cotton in 1652. 

Winthrop's letters to his wife show him to have 
been tender and gentle, and that his disposition was 
one to inspire love is proved by the affection those 
bore him who had suffered most at his hands. Wil- 
liams and Vane and Coddington kept their friendship 
for him to the end. But these very qualities, so ami- 
able in themselves, made him subject to the influence 
of men of inflexible will. His dream was to create on 
' earth a commonwealth of saints whose joy would be to 
\ walk in the ways of God. But in practice he had to 
deal with the strongest of human passions. In 1634, 
though supported by Cotton, he was defeated by Dud- 
1 Cambridge Platform, ch. x. section 7. 



THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 269 

ley, and there can be no doubt that this was caused 
by the defection of the body of the clergy. The ev- 
idence seems conclusive, for the next year Vane 
brought about an interview between the two at which 
Haynes was present, and there Haynes upbraided him 
with remissness in administering justice.^ Winthrop 
agreed to leave the question to the ministers, who the 
next morning gave an emphatic opinion in favor of 
strict discipline. Thenceforward he was pliant in 
their hands, and with that day opened the dark epoch 
of his life. By leading the crusade against the Anti- 
nomians he regained the confidence of the elders and 
they never again failed him ; but in return they ex- 
acted obedience to their will ; and the rancor with 
which he pursued Anne Hutchinson, Gorton, and 
Childe cannot be extenuated, and must ever be a 
stain upon his fame. 

As Hutchinson points out, in early life his tenden- 
cies were liberal, but in America he steadily grew \ 
narrow. The reason is obvious. The leader of an 
intolerant party has himself to be intolerant. His / 
claim to eminence as a statesman must rest upon the 
purity of his moral character, his calm temper, and 
his good judgment ; for his mind was not original or 
brilliant, nor was his thought in advance of his age. 
Herein he differed from his celebrated contemporary, 
for among the long list of famous men, who are the 
pride of Massachusetts, there are few who in mere 
intellectual capacity outrank Cotton. He was not 
1 Winthrop, i. 178. 



270 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 

only a profound scholar, an eloquent preacher, and a 
famous controversialist, but a great organizer, and a 
natural politician. He it was who constructed the 
Congregational hierarchy; his publications were the 
accepted authority both abroad and at home ; and 
the system which he developed in his books was that 
which was made law by the Cambridge Platform. 

Of medium height, florid complexion, and as he 
grew old some tendency to be stout, but with snowy 
hair and much personal dignity, he seems to have had 
an irresistible charm of manner toward those whom 
he wished to attract. 

Comprehending thoroughly the feelings and preju- 
dices of the clergy, he influenced them even more by 
his exquisite tact than by his commanding ability ; and 
of easy fortune and hospitable alike from inclination 
and from interest, he entertained every elder who went 
to Boston. He understood the art of flattery to per- 
fection ; or, as Norton expressed it, " he was a man of 
ingenuous and pious candor, rejoicing (as opportunity 
served) to take notice of and testifie unto the gifts of 
God in his brethren, thereby drawing the hearts of 
them to him. . . ." ^ No other clergyman has ever been 
1 able to reach the position he held with apparent ease, 
' which amounted to a sort of primacy of New England. 
His dangers lay in the very fecundity of his mind. 
Though hampered by his education and profession, he 
was naturally liberal ; and his first miscalculation was 
when, almost immediately on landing, he supported 
^ Norton's Funeral Sermon, p. 37. 



THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 271 

Winthrop, who was in disgrace for the mildness of his 
administration, against the austerer Dudley. 

The consciousness of his intellectual superiority 
seems to have given him an almost overweening confi- 
dence in his ability to induce his brethren to accept 
the broader theology he loved to preach ; nor did he 
apparently realize that comprehension was incompati- 
ble with a theocratic government, and that his success 
would have undermined the organization he was labor- 
ing to perfect. He thus committed the error of his j 
life in undertaking to preach a religious reformation, 
without having the resolution to face a martyrdom. 
But when he saw his mistake, the way in which he re- 
trieved himself showed a consummate knowledge of 
human nature and of the men with whom he had to 
deal. Nor did he ever forget the lesson. From that 
time forward he took care that no one should be able 
to pick a flaw in his orthodoxy ; and whatever he may 
have thought of much of the policy of his party, he 
was always ready to defend it without flinching. 

Neither he nor Winthrop died too soon, for with the 
completion of the task of organization the work that 
suited them was finished, and they were unfit for that \ 
which remained to be done. An oligarchy, whose 
power rests on faith and not on force, can only exist 
by extii'pating all who openly question their preten- 
sions to preeminent sanctity ; and neither of these men 
belonged to the class of natural persecutors, — the one 
was too gentle, the other too liberal. An example will 
show better than much argument how little in accord 



272 



THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 



either really was with that spirit which, in the regular 
course o£ social development, had thenceforward to 
dominate over Massachusetts. 

Captain Partridge had fought for the Parliament, 
and reached Boston at the beginning of the winter of 
1645. He was arrested and examined as a heretica 
The magistrates referred the case to Cotton, who re- 
ported that " he found him corrupt in judgment," but 
"had good hope to reclaim him." ^ An instant recan- 
tation was demanded ; it was of course refused, and, in 
spite of all remonstrance, the family was banished in 
the snow. Winthrop's sad words were : " But sure, 
the rule of hospitality to strangers, and of seeking to 
pluck out of the fire such as there may be hope of, 
... do seem to require more moderation and indul- 
gence of human infirmity where there appears not ob- 
stinacy against the clear truth." ^ 

But in the savage and bloody struggle that was now 
at hand there was no place for leaders capable of pity 
or remorse, and the theocracy found supremely gifted 
chieftains in John Norton and John Endicott. 

Norton approaches the ideal of the sterner orders of 
the priesthood. A gentleman by birth and breeding, 
a ripe scholar, with a keen though polished wit, his 
sombre temper was deeply tinged with fanaticism. 
Unlike so many of his brethren, temporal concerns 
were to him of but little moment, for every passion of 
his gloomy soul was intensely concentrated on the war- 
fare he believed himself waging with the fiend. Doubt 
1 Winthrop, ii. 251. » Winthrop, ii. 251. 



THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 21 S 

or compassion was impossible, for he was commis-"^ 
sioned by the Lord. He was Christ's elected minister, 
and misbelievers were children of the devil whom it 
was his sacred duty to destroy. He knew by the Word 
of God that all save the orthodox were lost, and that 
heretics not only perished, but were the hirelings of 
Satan, who tempted the innocent to their doom ; he 
therefore hated and feared them more than robbers or 
murderers. Words seemed to fail him when he tried to 
express his horror : " The face of death, the King of 
Terrours, the living man by instinct turneth his face 
from. An unusual shape, a satanical phantasm, a 
ghost, or apparition, affrights the disciples. But the 
face of heresie is of a more horrid aspect than all . . . 
put together, as arguing some signal inlargement of 
the power of darkness as being diabolical, prodigeous, 
portentous." ^ By nature, moreover, he had in their 
fullest measure the three attributes of a preacher of a 
persecution, — eloquence, resolution, and a heart cal- 
lous to human suffering. To this formidable church- 
man was joined a no less formidable magistrate. 

No figure in our early history looms out of the past 
like Endicott's. The harsh face still looks down from 
under the black skull-cap, the gray moustache and 
pointed beard shading the determined mouth, but 
throwing into relief the lines of the massive jaw. He 
is almost heroic in his ferocious bigotry and daring, — 
a perfect champion of the church. 

The grim Puritan soldier is almost visible as, stand- 
1 Heart of New Eng. Rent, p. 46. 



274 



THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 



ing at the head of his men, he tears the red cross from 
the flag, and defies the power of England ; or, in that 
tremendous moment, when the people were hanging 
breathless on the fate of Christison, when insurrection 
seemed bursting out beneath his feet, and his judges 
shrunk aghast before the peril, we yet hear the savage 
old man furiously strike the table, and, thanking God 
that he at least dares to do his duty, we see him rise 
alone before that threatening multitude to condemn 
the heretic to death. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE ANABAPTISTS. 

The Rev. Thomas Shepard, pastor of Ciarlestown, 
was such an example, " in word, m conversation, in 
civility, in spirit, in faith, in. purity, that he did let no 
man despise his youth ; " ^ and yet, preaching an elec- 
tion sermon before the governor and magistrates, he 
told them that " anabaptisme . . . hath ever been lookt 
at by the godly leaders of this people as a scab."^ 
While the Rev. Samuel Willard, president of Har- 
vard, declared that " such a rough thing as a New Eng- 
land Anabaptist is not to be handled over tenderly." ^ 

So early as 1644, therefore, the General Court 
" Ordered and agreed, y* if any pson or psons w*^in 
y® iurisdiction shall eith"" openly condemne or oppose 
y® baptiz^ of infants, or go about secretly to seduce 
oth''* fro™ y® app'bation or use thereof, or shall pur- 
posely depart y® congregation at y® administration of 
y® ordinance, . . . and shall appear to y® Co't will- 
fully and obstinately to continue therein after due 
time and nieanes of conviction, every such pson or 
psons shallbe sentenced to banishm*." * 

The legislation, however, was unpopular, for Win- 

^ Magnolia, bk. 4, ch. ix. § 6. ^ Eye Salve, p. 24. 

8 Ne Sutor, p. 10. 

* Mass. Rec. ii. 85. 13 November, 1644. 



276 THE ANABAPTISTS. 

throp relates that in October, 1645, divers mercliaiits 
and others petitioned to have the act repealed, because 
of the offense taken thereat by the godly in England, 
and the court seemed inclined to accede, " but many 
of the elders . . . entreated that the law might con- 
tinue still in force, and the execution of it not sus- 
pended, though they disliked not that all lenity and pa- 
tience should be used for convincing and reclaiming 
such erroneous persons. Whereupon the court refused 
to make any further order." ^ And Edward Wins- 
low assured Parliament in 1646, when sent to Eng- 
land to represent the colony, that, some mitigation 
being desired, " it was answered in my hearing. 'T is 
true we have a severe law, but wee never did or will 
execute the rigor of it upon any. . . . But the rea- 
son wherefore wee are loath either to repeale or alter 
the law is, because wee would have it ... to beare wit- 
nesse against their judgment, . . . which we conceive 
... to bee erroneous." ^ 

Unquestionably, at that time no one had been ban- 
ished ; but in 1644 " one Painter, for refusing to let 
his child be baptized, . . . was brought before the 
court, where he declared their baptism to be anti- 
Christian. He was sentenced to be whipped, which 
he bore without flinching, and boasted that God had 
assisted him." ^ Nor was his a solitary instance of 
severity. Yet, notwithstanding the scorn and hatred 
which the orthodox divines felt for these sectaries, 

1 Winthrop, ii. 251. 2 Hypocrisie Unmasked, 101. 

8 Hutch. Hist. i. 208, note. 



THE ANABAPTISTS. 277 

many very eminent Puritans fell into tlie errors of 
that persuasion. Roger Williams was a Baptist, and 
Henry Dunster, for the same heresy, was removed 
from the presidency of Harvard, and found it pru- 
dent to end his days within the Pl3anouth jurisdic- 
tion. Even that great champion of infant baptism, 
Jonathan Mitchell, when thrown into intimate rela- 
tions with Dunster, had doubts. 

" That day . . . after I came from him I had a 
strange experience ; I found hurrying and pressing 
suggestions against Psedobaptism, and injected scru- 
ples and thoughts whether the other way might not 
be right, and infant baptism an invention of men ; 
and whether I might with good conscience baptize 
children and the like. And these thoughts were 
darted in with some impression, and left a strange 
confusion and sickliness upon my spirit. Yet, me- 
thought, it was not hard to discern that they were 
from the £Jvil One ; . . • And it made me fearful to 
go needlessly to Mr. D. ; for methought I found a 
venom and poison in his insinuations and discourses 
against Pgedobaptism." ^ 

Henry Dunster was an uncommon man. Famed for 
piety in an age of fanaticism, learned, modest, and 
brave, by the unremitting toil of thirteen years he 
raised Harvard from a school to the position which 
it has since held ; and though very poor, and starving 
on a wretched and ill-paid pittance, he gave his be- 
loved college one hundred acres of land at the mo- 
1 Magnalia, bk. 4, ch. iv. § 10. 



278 THE ANABAPTISTS. 

ment of its sorest need.^ Yet he was a criminal, for 
he would not baptize infants, and he met with the 
" lenity and patience " which the elders were not un- 
willing should be used toward the erring. 

He was indicted and convicted of disturbing church 
ordinances, and deprived of his office in October, 1654. 
He asked for leave to stay in the house he had built 
for a few months, and his petition in November ought 
to be read to understand how heretics were made to 
suffer : — 

" 1st. The time of the year is unseasonable, being 
now very near the shortest day, and the depth of win- 
ter. 

" 2d. The place unto which I go is unknown to me 
and my family, and the ways and means of subsist- 
ance. . . . 

" 3d. The place from which I go hath fire, fuel, and 
all provisions for man and beast, laid in for the win- 
ter. . . . The house I have builded upon very damage- 
f ul conditions to myself, out of love for the college, 
taking country pay in lieu of bills of exchange on 
England, or the house would not have been built. . . . 

"4th. The persons, all beside mj'^self, are women 
and children, on whom little help, now their minds lie 
under the actual stroke of affliction and grief. My 
wife is sick, and my youngest child extremely so, and 
hath been for months, so that we dare not carry him 
out of doors, yet much worse now than before. . . . 
Myself will willingly bow my neck to any yoke of per- 
^ Quincy's History of Harvard, i. 15. 



THE ANABAPTISTS. 279 

sonal denial, for I know for what and for whom, by 
grace I suffer." ^ 

He had before asked Winthrop to cause the gov- 
ernment to pay him what it owed, and he ended his 
prayer in these words : " Considering the poverty of 
the country, I am willing to descend to the lowest 
step ; and if nothing can comfortably be allowed, I sit 
still appeased ; desiring nothing more than to supply 
me and mine with food and raiment." ^ He received 
that mercy which the church has ever shown to those 
who wander from her fold ; he was given till March, 
and then, with dues unpaid, was driven forth a broken 
man, to die in poverty and neglect. 

But Jonathan Mitchell, pondering deeply upon the 
wages he saw paid at his very hearthstone, to the sin 
of his miserable old friend, snatched his own soul from 
Satan's jaws. And thenceforward his path lay in 
pleasant places, and he prospered exceedingly in the 
world, so that " of extreara lean he grew extream fat ; 
and at last, in an extream hot season, a fever arrested 
him, just after he had been preaching. . . . Wonder- 
ful were the lamentations which this deplorable death 
fill'd the churches of New England withal. . . . Yea 
... all New England shook when that pillar fell to 
the ground." ^ 

Notwithstanding, therefore, clerical promises of gen- 
tleness, Massachusetts was not a comfortable place of 
residence for Baptists, who, for the most part, went to 

1 History of Harvard, i. 18. 2 idem, i. 20. 

3 Magnolia, bk. 4, ch. iv. § 16. 



280 THE ANABAPTISTS. 

Rhode Island ; and John Clark ^ became the pastor of 
the church which they formed at Newport about 1644. 
He had been born about 1610, and had been educated 
in London as a physician. In 1637 he landed at Bos- 
ton, where he seems to have become embroiled in the 
Antinomian controversy ; at all events, he fared so ill 
that, with several others, he left Massachusetts 're- 
solving, through the help of Christ, to get clear of all 
[chartered companies] and be of ourselves.' In the 
course of their wanderings they fell in with Williams, 
and settled near him. 

Clark was perhaps the most prominent man in the 
Plantations, filled many public offices, and was the 
commissioner who afterward secured for the colony 
the famous charter that served as the State Constitu- 
tion till 1842. 

Obediah Holmes, who succeeded him as Baptist 
minister of Newport, is less well known. He was ed- 
ucated at Oxford, and when he emigrated he settled 
at Salem ; from thence he went to Seaconk, where he 
joined the church under Mr. Newman. Here he soon 
fell into trouble for resisting what he maintained was 
an " unrighteous act " of his pastor's ; in consequence 
he and several more renounced the communion, and 
began to worship by themselves ; they were baptized 
and thereafter they were excommunicated ; the inev- 
itable indictment followed, and they, too, took refuge 
in Rhode Island.^ 

1 For sketch of Clark's life see Allen's Biographical Dictionary. 
* Holmes's Narrative, Backus, i. 213. 



THE ANABAPTISTS. 281 

William Witter^ of Lynn was an aged Baptist, 
who had already been prosecuted, but, in 1651, being 
blind and infirm, lie asked the Newport cliureh to send 
some of the brethren to him, to administer the com- 
munion, for he found himself alone in Massachusetts.^ 
Accordingly Clark undertook the mission, with Obe- 
diah Holmes and John Crandall. 

They reached Lynn on Saturday, July 19, 1C51, 
and on Sunday stayed within doors in order not to 
disturb the congregation. A few friends were pres- 
ent, and Clark was in the midst of a sermon, when the 
house was entered by two constables with a warrant 
signed by Robert Bridges, commanding them to arrest 
certain " erroneous persons being strangers." The 
travellers were at once seized and carried to the tav- 
ern, and after dinner they were told that they must 
go to church. 

Gorton, like many another, had to go through this 
ordeal, and he speaks of his Sundays with much feel- 
ing : " Only some part of those dayes they brought us 
forth into their congregations, to hear their sermons 
. . . which was meat to be digested, but only by the 
heart or stomacke of an ostrich." ^ 

The unfortunate Baptists remonstrated, saying that 
were they forced into the meeting-house, they should 
be obliged to dissent from the service, but this, the 
constable said, was nothing to him, and so he carried 

1 For the following events, see "III Newesfrom New Eng- 
land," Mass. Hist. Coll. fourth series, vol. ii. 
3 Backus, i. 215. 
* Simplicilie's Defence, p. 57. 



282 THE ANABAPTISTS. 

them away. On entering, during the prayer, the pris- 
oners took off their hats, but presently put them on 
again and began reading in their seats. Whereupon 
Bridges ordered the officers to uncover their heads, 
which was done, and the service was then quietly 
finished. When all was over, Clark asked leave to 
speak, which, after some hesitation, was granted, on 
condition he would not discuss what he had heard. 
He began to explain how he had put on his hat be- 
cause he could not judge that they were gathered ac- 
cording to the visible order of the Lord ; but here he 
was silenced, and the three were committed to custody 
for the night. On Tuesday they were taken to Bos- 
ton, and on the 31st were brought before Governor 
Endicott. Their trial was of the kind reserved by 
priests for heretics. No jury was impanelled, no in- 
dictment was read, no evidence was heard, but the 
prisoners were reviled by the bench as Anabaptists, 
and when they repudiated the name were asked if 
they did not deny infant baptism. The theological 
argument which followed was cut short by a recommit- 
ment to await sentence. 

That afternoon John Cotton exhorted the judges 
from the pulpit. He expounded the law, and com- 
manded them to do their duty ; he told them that 
the rejection of infant baptism would overthrow the 
church ; that this was a capital crime, and therefore 
the captives were " foul murtherers." ^ Thus inspired, 
the court came in toward evening. 
^ III Newes, p. 56. 



THE ANABAPTISTS. 283 

The record recites a number of misdemeanors, such 
as wearing the hat in church, administering the com- 
munion to the excommunicated, and the like, but no 
attempt was made to prove a single charge.^ The 
reason is obvious : the only penalty provided by stat- 
ute for the offence of being a Baptist was banishment, 
hence the only legal course would have been to dis- 
miss the accused. Endicott condemned them to fines 
of twenty, thirty, and five pounds, respectively, or to 
be whipped. Clark understood his position perfectly, 
and from the first had demanded to be shown the law 
imder which he was being tried. He now, after sen- 
tence, renewed the request. Endicott well knew that 
in acting as the mouthpiece of the clergy he was vio- 
lating alike justice, his oath of office, and his honor 
as a judge; and, being goaded to fury, he broke 
out : You have deserved death ; I will not have such 
trash brought into our jurisdiction. ^ Holmes tells the 
rest : "As I went from the bar, I exprest myself in 
these words, — I blesse God I am counted worthy to 
suffer for the name of Jesus ; whereupon John Wilson 
(their pastor, as they call him) strook me before the 
judgement seat, and cursed me, saying, The curse of 
God . . . goe with thee ; so we were carried to the 
prison." ^ 

All the convicts maintained that their liberty as 
English subjects had been violated, and they refused 
to pay their fines. Clark's friends, however, alarmed 
for his safety, settled his for him, and he was dis- 
charged. 

1 111 Newes, pp. 31-44. s Idem, p. 33. s jclem, p. 47. 



284 THE ANABAPTISTS. 

Crandall was admitted to bail, but being mis- 
informed as to the time o£ surrender, he did not ap- 
pear, his bond was forfeited, and on his return to 
Boston he found himself free. 

Thus Holmes was left to face his punishment alone. 
Actuated apparently by a deep sense of duty toward 
himself and his God, he refused the help of friends, 
and steadfastly awaited his fate. As he lay in prison 
he suffered keenly as he thought of his birth and breed- 
ing, his name, his worldly credit, and the humiliation 
which must come to his wife and children from his 
public shame ; then, too, he began to fear lest he 
might not be able to bear the lash, might flinch or shed 
tears, and bring contempt on himself and his religion. 
Yet when the morning came he was calm and reso- 
hite ; refusing food and drink, that he might not be 
said to be sustained by liquor, he betook himself to 
prayer, and when his keeper called him, with his Bi- 
ble in his hand, he walked cheerfully to the post. He 
would have spoken a few words, but the magistrate or- 
dered the executioner to do his office quickly, for this 
fellow would delude the people ; then he was seized 
and stripped, and as he cried, " Lord, lay not this sin 
unto their chai'ge," he received the first blow.^ 

They gave him thirty lashes with a three-thonged 
whip, of such horrible severity that it was many days 
before he could endure to have his lacerated bod}' 
touch the bed, and he rested propped upon his hands 
and knees.^ Yet, in spite of his torture, he stood firm 

1 111 Neims, pp. 48, 56. 

2 Backus, i. 237, note. MS. of Gov. Jos. Jencks. 



THE ANABAPTISTS. 285 

and calm, showing neither pain nor fear, breaking out 
at intervals into praise to God ; and his dignity and 
courage so impressed the people that, in spite of the 
danger, numbers flocked about him when he was set 
free, in sympathy and admiration. John Spur, being 
inwardly affected by what he saw and heard, took 
him by the hand, and, with a joyful countenance, 
said : " Praised be the Lord," and so went back with 
him. That same day Spur was arrested, charged 
with the crime of succoring a heretic. Then said the 
undaunted Spur : " Obediah Holmes I do look upon 
as a godly man : and do affirm that he carried himself 
as did become a Christian, under so sad an affliction." 
"AV^e will deal with you as we have dealt with him," 
said Endicott. " I am in the hands of God," answered 
Spur ; and then his keeper took him to his prison.^ 

Perhaps no persecutor ever lived who was actuated 
by a single motive : Saint Dominic probably had some 
trace of worldliness ; Henry VIII. some touch of 
bigotry ; and this was preeminently true of the Mas- 
sachusetts elders. Doubtless there were anions them 
men like Norton, whose fanaticism was so fierce that 
they would have destroyed the heretic like the wild 
beast, as a child of the devil, and an abomination to 
God. But with the majority worldly motives predom- 
inated : they were always protesting that they did not 
constrain men's consciences, but only enforced orderly 
living. Increase Mather declared : in " the same church 
there have been Presbyterians, Independents, Epis- 
1 111 Newes, p. 57. 



286 THE ANABAPTISTS. 

copallans, and Antipaedobaptists, all welcome to the 
same table of the Lord when they have manifested to 
the judgment of Christian charity a work of regener- 
ation in their souls." ^ And Winslow solemnly assured 
Parliament, " Nay, some in our churches " are " of 
that judgment, and as long as they [Baptists] carry 
themselves peaceably as hitherto they doe, wee will 
\/ leave them to God." ^ 

Such statements, although intended to convey a 
false impression, contained this much truth : provided 
a man conformed to all the regidations of the church, 
paid his taxes, and held his tongue, he would not, in 
f ordinary circumstances, have been molested under the 
Puritan Commonwealth. But the moment he refused 
implicit obedience, or, above all, if he withdrew from 
his congregation, he was shown no mercy, because 
such acts tended to shake the temporal power. John 
Wilson, pastor of Boston, was a good example of the 
average of his order. On his death-bed he was asked 
to declare what he thought to be the worst sins of the 
country. "'I have long feared several sins, whereof 
one,' he said, ' was Corahism : that is, when people 
rise up as Corah against their ministers, as if they took 
too much upon them, when indeed they do but rule 
for Christ, and according to Christ.' " ^ Permeated 
with this love of power, and possessed of a superb 
organization, the clergy never failed to act on public 

1 Vindication of New Eng. p. 19. 

2 Hypocrisie Unmasked, p. 101. A. D. 1646. 
* Magnalia, bk. 3, ch. iii. § 17. 



THE ANABAPTISTS. 287 

opinion with decisive effect whenever they saw their 
worldly interests endangered. Childe has described ^ 
the attack which overwhelmed him, and Gorton gives 
a striking account of their process of inciting a cru- 
sade : — 

" These things concluded to be heresies and blas- 
phemies. . . . The ministers did zealously preach unto 
the people the great danger of such things, and the 
guilt such lay under that held them, stirring the people 
up to labour to find such persons out and to execute 
death upon them, making persons so execrable in the 
eyes of the people, whom they intimated aliould hold 
such things, yea some of them naming some of us in 
their pulpits, that the people that had not seen us 
thought us to be worse by far in any respect then those 
barbarous Indians are in the country. . . . Where- 
upon we heard a rumor that the Massachusets was 
sending out an army of men to cut us off." ^ 

The persecution of the Baptists lays bare this self- 
ish clerical policy. The theory of the suppression of , 
heresy as a sacred duty breaks down when it is con- 
ceded that the heretic may be admitted to the ortho- 
dox communion without sin ; therefore the motives '■'' 
for cruelty were sordid. The ministers felt instinct- 
ively that an open toleration would impair their power ; / 
not only because the congregations would divide, but 
because these sectaries listened to " John Russell the 
shoemaker." ^ Obviously, were cobblers to usurp the , 
sacerdotal functions, the superstitious reverence of the ^ 
1 Simplicitie's Defence, p. 32. ^ jsfg Sutor, p. 26. 



288 THE ANABAPTISTS. 

v 

people for the priestly office would not long endure : 

' and it was his crime in upholding this sacrilegious 

I/practice which made the Rev. Thomas Cobbett cry 

out in his pulpit " against Gorton, that arch-heretick, 

V who would have al men to be preachers." ^ 

Therefore, though Winslow solemnly protested be- 
fore the Commissioners at London that Baptists who 
lived peaceably would be left unmolested, yet such of 
them as listened to " f oul-murtherers " ^ were de- 
nounced by the divines as dangerous fanatics who 
threatened to overthrow the government, and were 
hunted through the country like wolves. 

Thomas Gould was an esteemed citizen of Charles- 
town, but, unfortunately for himself, he had long felt 
doubt concerning infant baptism ; so when, in 1655, 
a child was born to him, he '' durst not " have it 
christened. " The elder pressed the church to lay me 
under admonition, which the church was backward 
to do. Afterward I went out at the sprinkling of 
children, which was a great trouble to some honest 
hearts, and they told me of it. But I told them I 
could not stay, for I lookt upon it as no ordinance of 
Christ. They told me that now I had made known 
my judgment I might stay. . . . So I stayed and sat 
down in my seat when they were at prayer and ad- 
ministring the service to infants. Then they dealt 
with me for my unreverent carriage." ^ That is to 

^ Simplicitie's Defence, p. 32. See Ne Sutor, p. 26. 

2 "III Newes," Mass. Hist. Coll. fourth series, vol. ii. p. 56, 

8 Gould's Narrative, Backus, i. 364-366. 



THE ANABAPTISTS. 289 

say, his pastor, Mr. Symmes, caused him to be admon- 
ished and excluded from the communion. In Octo- 
ber, 1656, he was presented to the county court for 
" denying baptism to his chikl," convicted, admon- 
ished, and given till the next term to consider of his 
error ; and gradually his position at Charlestown be- 
came so unpleasant that he went to church at Cam- 
bridge, which was a cause of fresh offence to Mr. 
Symmes.^ 

From this time forward for several years, though 
no actual punishment seems to have been inflicted, 
Gould was subjected to perpetual annoyance, and was 
repeatedly summoned and admonished, both by the 
courts and the church, until at length he brought mat- 
ters to a crisis by withdrawing, and with eight others 
forming a church, on May 28, 1665. 

He thus tells his story : " We sought the Lord 
to direct us, and taking counsel of other friends who 
dwelt among us, who were able and godly, they gave 
us counsel to congregate ourselves together ; and so 
we did, ... to walk in the order of the gospel ac- 
cording to the rule of Christ, yet knowing it was a 
breach of the law of this country. . . . After we had 
been called into one or two courts, the church under- 
standing that we were gathered into church order, they 
sent three messengers from the church to me, telling 
me the church required me to come before them the 
next Lord's day." ^ That Sunday he could not go, 

^ History of Charlestoim, Frothinfjham, p. 164. 
' Gould's Nanntive, Backus, i. 369. 



290 



THE ANABAPTISTS. 



but he promised to attend on the one following ; ^ and 
his wife relates what was then done : " The word was 
carried to the elder, that if they were alive and well 
they would come the next day, yet they were so hot 
upon it that they could not stay, but master Sims, 
when he was laying out the sins of these men, before 
he had propounded it to the church, to know their 
mind, the church having no liberty to speak, he 
wound it up in his discourse, and delivered them up 
to Satan, to the amazement of the people, that ever 
such an ordinance of Christ should be so abused, that 
many of the people went out ; and these were the 
excommunicated persons." ^ The sequence is com- 
plete: so long as Gould confined his heresy to pure 
speculation upon dogma he was little heeded; when 
he withheld his child from baptism and went out 
during the ceremony he was admonished, denied the 
sacrament, and treated as a social outcast ; but when 
he separated, he was excommunicated and given to 
the magistrate to be crushed. 

Passing from one tribunal to another the sectaries 
came before the General Court in October, 1665 : 
such as were freemen were disfranchised, and all were 
sentenced, upon conviction before a single magistrate 
of continued schism, to be imprisoned until further 
order.^ The following April they were fined four 
pounds and put in confinement, where they lay til] 

1 Gould's Narrative, Backus, i. 371. 

2 Mrs. Gould's Answer, Backus, i. 384. 
8 Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 291. 



THE ANABAPTISTS. 291 

the 11th of September, when the legislature, after a 
hearing, ordered them to be discharged upon payment 
of fines and costs. ^ 

How many Baptists were prosecuted, and what they 
suffered, is not known, as only an imperfect record 
remains of the fortunes of even the leaders of the 
movement; this much, however, is certain, they not 
only continued contumacious, but persecution added to 
their numbers. So at length the clergy decided to try 
what effect a public refutation of these heretics woidd 
have on popular opinion. Accordingly the governor 
and council, actuated by " Christian candor," ordered 
the Baptists to appear at the meeting-house, at nine 
o'clock in the morning, on the 14th of April, 1668 ; 
and six ministers were deputed to conduct the dispu- 
tation.^ 

During the immolation of Dunster the Rev. Mr. 
Mitchell had made up his mind that he " would have 
an argument able to remove a mountain " before he 
would swerve from his orthodoxy ; he had since con- 
firmed his faith by preaching " more than half a score 
ungainsayable sermons " " in defence of this comfort- 
able truth," and he was now prepared to maintain it 
against all comers. Accordingly this " worthy man 
was he who did most service in this disputation ; 
whereof the effect was, that although the erring breth- 
ren, as is usual in such cases, made this their last 
answer to the argrmients which had cast them into 
much confusion : ' Say what you will we will hold our 

1 Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 316. 2 Backus, i. 375. 



292 THE ANABAPTISTS. 

mind.' Yet others were happily established in the 
right ways of the Lord." ^ 

Such is the account of Cotton Mather : but the 
story of the Baptists presents a somewhat different 
view of the proceedings. " It is true there were 
seven elders appointed to discourse with them . . . 
and when they were met, there was a long speech made 
by one of them of what vile persons they were, and 
how they acted against the churches and government 
here, and stood condemned by the court. The others 
desiring liberty to speak, they would not suffer them, 
but told them they stood there as delinquents and 
ought not to have liberty to speak, . . . Two days 
were spent to little purpose ; in the close, master 
Jonathan Mitchel pronounced that dreadful sentence 
against them in Deut. xvii. 8, to the end of the 12th, 
and this was the way they took to convince them, and 
you may see what a good effect it had." ^ 

The sentence pronounced by Mitchell was this : 
" And the man that will do presumptuously, and will 
not hearken unto the priest that standeth to minister 
there before the Lord thy God, or unto the judge, 
even that man shall die : and thou shalt put away the 
evil from Israel." ^ 

On the 27th of May, 1668, Gould, Turner, and Far- 
num, " obstinate & turbulent Annabaptists," were ban- 
ished under pain of perpetual imprisonment.^ They 

1 Magnolia, bk. 4, ch. iv. § 10. 

2 Mrs. Gould's Answer, Backus, i. 384, 385. 

8 Deut. xvii. 12. * Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. ii, pp. 373-375. 



THE ANABAPTISTS. 293 

determined to stay and face their fate : afterward they 
wrote to the masfistrates : — 



Honoured Sirs : . . . After the tenders of our 
service according to Christ, his command to your 
selves and the country, wee thought it our duty and 
concernment to present your honours with these few 
lines to put you in remembrance of our bonds : and 
this being the twelfth week of our imprisonment, wee 
should be glad if it might be thought to stand with 
the honour and safety of the country, and the present 
government thereof, to be now at liberty. For wee 
doe hereby seriously profess, that as farre as wee are 
sensible or know anything of our own hearts, wee do 
prefer their peace and safety above our own, however 
wee have been resented otherwise : and wherein wee 
differ in point of judgment wee humbly beeseech you, 
let there be a bearing with us, till god shal reveale 
otherwise to us ; for there is a spirit in man and the 
inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understand- 
ing, therefore if wee are in the dark, wee dare not 
say that wee doe see or understand, till the Lord shall 
cleare things up to us. And to him wee can appeale 
to cleare up our innocency as touching the govern- 
ment, both in your civil and church affaires. That it 
never was in our hearts to thinke of doing the least 
wrong to either : but have and wee hope, by your as- 
sistance, shal alwaies indeavour to keepe a conscience 
void of offence towards god and men. And if it shal 
be thought meete to afforde us our liberty, that wee 



294 



THE ANABAPTISTS. 



may take that care, as becomes us, for our families, 
wee shal engage ourselves to be alwayes in a readi- 
nes to resigne up our persons to your pleasure. Hop- 
ing your honours will be pleased seriously to consider 
our condition, wee shall commend both you and it to 
the wise disposing and blessing of the Almighty, and 
remaine your honours faithful servants in what we 
may. 

Tho : Gold 
Will : Turner 
John Farnum.^ 



Such were the men whom the clergy daily warned 
their congregations " would certainly undermine the 
churches, mine order, destroy piety, and introduce pro- 
phaneness." ^ And when they appealed to their spot- 
less lives and their patience under affliction, they were 
told " that the vilest hereticks and grossest blasphem- 
ers have resolutely and cheerfully (at least sullenly 
and boastingly) suffered as well as the people of 
God." ' 

The feeling of indignation and of sympathy was, 
notwithstanding, strong ; and in spite of the danger of 
succoring heretics, sixty-six inhabitants, among whom 
were some of the most respected citizens of Charles- 
town, petitioned the legislature for mercy : " They be- 
ing aged and weakly men ; . . . the sense of this their 
. . . most deplorable and afflicted condition hath 
1 Mass. Archives^ x. 220. ^ jVe Sutor, p. 11. 

« Ne Sutor, p. 9. 



THE ANABAPTISTS. 295 

Badly affected the hearts of many . . . Christians, and 
Bueh as neither approve of their judgment or prac- 
tice ; especially considering that the men are reputed 
godly, and of a blameless conversation. . . . We 
therefore most humbly beseech this honored court, in 
their Christian mercy and bowels of compassion, to 
pity and relieve these poor prisoners." ^ On Novem- 
ber 7, 1668, the petition was voted " scandalous & re- 
proachful," the two chief promoters were censured, 
admonished, and fined ten and five pounds respec- 
tively ; the others were made, under their own hands, 
to express their sorrow, " for giving the court such 
just ground of offence." ^ 

The shock was felt even in England. In March, 
1669, thirteen of the most influential dissenting min- 
isters wrote from London earnestly begging for mod- 
eration lest they should be made to suffer from re- 
taliation ; but their remonstrance was disregarded.^ 
What followed is not exactly known ; the convicts 
would seem to have lain in jail about a year, and they 
are next mentioned in a letter to Clark written in No- 
vember, 1670, in which he was told that Turner had 
been again arrested, but that Gould had eluded the 
officers, who were waiting for him in Boston ; and was 
on Noddle's Island. Subsequently all were taken and 
treated with the extremest rigor ; for in June, 1672, 
Russell was so reduced that it was supposed he could 
not live, and he was reported to have died in prison. 

1 Backus, i. 380, 381. 2 Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 4ia 

8 Backus, i. 395. 



296 



THE ANABAPTISTS. 



V 



Six months before Gould and Turner had been thought 
/ past hope ; their sufferings had brought them all to 
the brink of the grave. ^ But relief was at hand : the 
"victory for freedom had been won by the blood of 
^ heretics, as devoted, as fearless, but even unhappier 
l^than they ; and the election of Leverett, in 1673, who 
^r/as opposed to persecution, marks the moment when 
^/the hierarchy admitted their defeat. During his ad- 
ministration the sectaries usually met in private un- 
^disturbed ; and soon every energy of the theocracy 
became concentrated on the effort to repulse the ever 
contracting circle of enemies who encompassed it. 

During the next few years events moved fast. In 
1678 the ecclesiastical power was so shattered that the 
Baptists felt strong enough to build a church ; but the 
old despotic spirit lived even in the throes of death, 
and the legislature passed an act forbidding the erec- 
tion of unlicensed meeting-houses under penalty of 
confiscation. Nevertheless it was finished, but on the 
Sunday on which it was to have been opened the mar- 
shal nailed the doors fast and posted notices forbid- 
ding all persons to enter, by order of the coui^t. After 
a time the doors were broken open, and services were 
held ; a number of the congregation were summoned 
before the court, admonished, and forbidden to meet 
in any public place ; ^ but the handwriting was now 
glowing on the wall, priestly threats had lost their 
terror ; the order was disregarded ; and now for al- 

1 Backus, i. 398-404, 405. 

2 June 11, 1680. Mass. Rec. v. 271. 



THE ANABAPTISTS. 297 

most two hundred years Massachusetts has been fore- 
most in defending the equal rights of men before the 
law. 

The old world was passing away, a new era was 
opening, and a few words are due to that singular 
aristocracy which so long ruled New England. For 
two centuries Increase Mather has been extolled as an 
eminent example of the abilities and virtues which then 
adorned his order. In 1681, when all was over, he 
published a solemn statement of the attitude the clergy 
had held toward the Baptists, and from his words pos- 
terity may judge of their standard of morality and of 
truth. 

" The Annabaptists in New England have in their 
narrative lately published, endeavoured to . . . make 
themselves the innocent persons and the Lord's ser- 
vants here no better than persecutors. ... I have 
been a poor labourer in the Lord's Vineyard in this 
place upward of twenty years ; and it is more than I 
know, if in all that time, any of those that scruple 
infant baptism, have met with molestation from the 
magistrate merely on account of their opinion." ^ 
1 Preface to Ne Sutor. 



y 



CHAPTER V. 

THE QUAKERS. 

v/ 

The lower the organism, the less would seem to be 
^ the capacity for physical adaptation to changed con- 
ditions of life ; the jelly-fish dit > in the aquarium, the 
dog has wandered throughout the world with his mas- 
ter. The same principle apparently holds true in 
the evolution of the intellect ; for while the oyster 
lacks consciousness, the bee modifies the structure of 
its comb, and the swallow of her nest, to suit unforeseen 
contingencies, while the dog, the horse, and the ele- 
phant are capable of a high degree of education.^ 

Applying this law to man, it will be found to be a 

fact that, whereas the barbarian is most tenacious of 

custom, the European can adopt new fashions with 

comparative ease. The obvious inference is, that in 

proportion as the brain is feeble it is incapable of the 

effort of origination ; therefore, savages are the slaves 

of routine. Probably a stronger nervous system, or a 

\y peculiarity of environment, or both combined, served 

to excite impatience with their surroundings among 

the more favored races, from whence came a desire for 

innovation. And the mental flexibility thus slowly 

y developed has passed by inheritance, and has been 

^ Menial Evolution in Animals, Romanes, Am. ed. pp. 203-210. 



THE QUAKERS. 299 

strengtheued by use, until the tendency to vary, or 
think independently, has become an irrepressible in- 
stinct among some modern nations. Conservatism is 
the converse of variation, and as it springs from men- 
tal inejjtia it is always a progressively salient charac- 

> teristic of each group in the descending scale. The 
Spaniard is less mutable than the Englishman, the 
Hindoo than the Spaniard, the Hottentot than the 
Hindoo, and the ape than the Hottentot. Therefore, 
i a power whose existence depends upon the fixity of 
custom must be inimical to progress, but the authority 
of a sacred caste is altogether based upon an unreason- 
ing reverence for tradition, — in short, on superstition ; 
and as free inquiry is fatal to a belief in those fables 
which awed the childhood of the race, it has followed 
that established priesthoods have been almost uni- 
formly the most conservative of social forces, and that 

^' clergymen have seldom failed to slay their variable 

1 brethren when opportunity has offered. History teems 

with such slaughters, some of the most instructive of 

which are related in the Old Testament, whose code of 

' morals is purely theological. 

Though there may be some question as to the strict 
veracity of the author of the Book of Kings, yet, as he 
was evidently a thorough churchman, there can be no 
doubt that he has faithfully preserved the traditions 
of the hierarchy ; his chronicle therefore presents, as 
it were, a perfect mirror, wherein are reflected the 
workings of the ecclesiastical mind through many gen- 
erations. According to his account, the theocracy only 



800 



THE QUAKERS. 



triumphed after a long and doubtful striiggle. Sam- 
uel must have been an exceptionally able man, for, 
though he failed to control Saul, it was through his in- 
trigues that David was enthroned, who was profoundly 
orthodox ; yet Solomon lapsed again into heresy, and 
Jeroboam added to schism the even blacker crime of 
making " priests of the lowest of the people, which 
were not of the sons of Levi," ^ and in consequence he 
has come down to posterity as the man who made 
Israel to sin. Ahab married Jezebel, who introduced 
the worship of Baal, and gave the support of govern- 
ment to a rival church. She therefore roused a hate 
which has made her immortal ; but it was not until 
the reign of her son Jehoram that Elisha apparently 
felt strong enough to execute a plot he had made with 
one of the generals to precipitate a revolution, in which 
the whole of the house of Ahab should be murdered 
and the heretics exterminated. The awful story is 
told with wonderful power in the Bible. 

" And Elisha the prophet called one of the children 
of the prophets, and said unto him. Gird up thy 
loins, and take this box of oil in thine hand, and go 
to Ramoth-gilead : and when thou comest thither, 
look out there Jehu, . . . and make him arise up 
. . . and carry him to an inner chamber ; then take 
the box of oil, and pour it on his head, and say. 
Thus saith the Lord, I have anointed thee king over 
Israel. . . . 

"So the young man . . . went to Ramoth-gilead. 
^ 1 Kings xii. 31. 



THE QUAKERS. 301 

. . . And he said, I have an errand to thee, O cap^ 
tain. . . . 

" And he arose, and went into the house ; and he 
poured the oil on his head, and said unto him, Thus 
saith the Lord God of Israel, I have anointed thee 
king over the people of the Lord, even over Israel. 

" And thou shalt smite the house of Ahab thy mas 
ter, that I may avenge the blood of my servants the 
prophets. . . . 

" For the whole house of Ahab shall perish : . . . 
and I will make the house of Ahab like the house of 
Jeroboam the son of Nebat, . . . and the dogs shall 
eat Jezebel. . . . 

" Then Jehu came forth to the servants of his lord : 
. . . And he said. Thus spake he to me, saying. 
Thus saith the Lord, I have anointed thee king over 
Israel. 

"Then they hasted, . . . and blew with trumpets, 
saying, Jehu is king. So Jehu . . . conspired against 
Joram. . . . 

" But king Joram was returned to be healed in Jez- 
reel of the wounds which the Syrians had given him, 
when he fought with Hazael king of Syria. . . . 

" So Jehu rode in a chariot, and went to Jezreel ; 
for Joram lay there. . . . 

" And Joram . . . went out ... in his chariot, . . . 
against Jehu. . . . And it came to pass, when Joram 
saw Jehu, that he said, Is it peace, Jehu ? And he 
answered. What peace, so long as the whoredoms of 
thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many ? 



302 THE QUAKERS. 

" And Joram turned his hands, and fled, and said to 
Ahaziah, There is treachery, O Ahaziah. 

" And Jehu drew a bow with his full strength, and 
smote Jehorani between his arms, and the arrow went 
out at his heart, and he sunk down in his chariot. . . . 

" But when Ahaziah the king of Judah saw this, he 
fled by the way of the garden house. And Jehu fol- 
lowed after him, and said. Smite him also in the 
chariot. And they did so. . . . 

" And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel 
heard of it ; and she painted her face, and tired her 
head, and looked out at a window. 

" And as Jehu entered in at the gate, she said, Had 
Zimri peace, who slew his master? . . . 

" And he said, Throw her down. So they threw her 
down : and some of her blood was sprinkled on the 
wall, and on the horses : and he trod her under 
foot. . . . 

" And Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria. And 
Jehu wrote letters, ... to the elders, and to them 
that brought up Ahab's children, saying, ... If ye 
be mine, . . . take ye the heads of . . . your mas- 
ter's sons, and come to me to Jezreel by to-morrow 
this time. . . . And it came to pass, when the letter 
came to them, that they took the king's sons, and 
slew seventy persons, and put their heads in baskets, 
and sent him them to Jezreel. . . . 

" And he said. Lay ye them in two heaps at the en- 
tering in of the gate until the morning. . . . 

" So Jehu slew all that remained of the house of 



THE QUAKERS. 303 

Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men, and his kins- 
folks, and his priests, until he left him none remaining. 

" And he arose and departed, and came to Samaria. 
And as he was at the shearing house in the way, Jehu 
met with the brethren of Ahaziah king of Judah. . . . 

" And he said, Take them alive. And they took 
them alive, and slew them at the pit of the shearing 
house, even two and forty men ; neither left he any of 
them. . . . 

" And when he came to Samaria, he slew all that re- 
mained unto Ahab in Samaria, till he had destroyed 
him, according to the saying of the Lord, which he 
spake to Elijah. 

" And Jehu gathered all the people together, and 
said unto them, Ahab served Baal a little ; but Jehu 
shall serve him much. Now therefore call unto me 
all the prophets of Baal, all his servants, and all his 
priests ; let none be wanting : for I have a great sac- 
rifice to do to Baal ; whosoever shall be wanting, 
he shall not live. But Jehu did it in subtilty, to 
the intent that he might destroy the worshippers of 
Baal. . . . 

" And Jehu sent through all Israel : and all the wor- 
shippers of Baal came, so that there was not a man 
left that came not. And they came into the house of 
Baal ; and the house of Baal was full from one end to 
another. . . . 

"And it came to pass, as soon as he had made an 
end of offering the burnt offering, that Jehu said to 
the guard and to the captains, Go in, and slay them; 



304 THE QUAKERS. 

let none come forth. And they smote them with the 
edge of the sword ; and the guard and the captains 
cast them out. . . . 

" Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel." ^ 
Viewed from the standpoint of comparative history, 
the policy of theocratic Massachusetts toward the 
Quakers was the necessary consequence of antecedent 
causes, and is exactly parallel with the massacre of 
the house of Ahab by Elisha and Jehu. The power 
of a dominant priesthood depended on conformity, 
and the Quakers absolutely refused to conform ; nor 
was this the blackest of their crimes : they believed 
that the Deity communicated directly with men, and 
that these revelations were the highest rule of con- 
duct. Manifestly such a doctrine was revolutionary. 
The influence of all ecclesiastics must ultimately rest 
upon the popular belief that they are endowed with 
attributes which are denied to common men. The syl- 
logism of the New England elders was this : all rev- 
elation is contained in the Bible ; we alone, from our 
peculiar education, are capable of interpreting the 
meaning of the Scriptures : therefore we only can de- 
clare the will of God. But it was evident that, were 
the dogma of " the inner light " once accepted, this 
reasoning must fall to the ground, and the authority 
of the ministry be overthrown. Necessarily those who 
held so subversive a doctrine would be pursued with 
greater hate than less harmful heretics, and thus con- 
templating the situation there is no difficulty in un- 
derstanding why the Rev. John Wilson, pastor of 
^ 2 Kings ix., x. 



MM 



THE QUAKERS. 305 

Boston, should have vociferated in his pulpit, that "he 
would carry fire in one hand and faggots in the other, 
to burn all the Quakers in the world ; " ^ why the Rev. 
John Higginson should have denounced the " inner 
light " as "a stinking vapour from hell ; " ^ why the 
astute Norton should have taught that "the justice of 
God was the devil's armour ; " ^ and why Endicott 
sternly warned the first comers, " Take heed you 
break not our ecclesiastical laws, for then ye are sure 
to stretch by a halter." * 

Nevertheless, this view has not commended itself to 
those learned clergymen who have been the chief his- 
torians of the Puritan commonwealth. They have, on 
the contrary, steadily maintained that the sectaries 
were the persecutors, since the company had exclusive 
ownership of the soil, and acted in self-defence. 

The case of Roger Williams is thus summed up by 
Dr. Dexter : " In all strictness and honesty he per- 
secuted them — not they him ; just as the modern 
' Come-outer,' who persistently intrudes his bad man- 
ners and pestering presence upon some private com- 
pany, making himself, upon pretence of conscience, a 
nuisance there ; is — if sane — the persecutor, rather 
than the man who forcibly assists, as well as courte- 
ously requires, his desired departure." ^ 

1 New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 124. 

* Truth and Innocency Defended, ed. 1703, p. 80. 
8 New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 9. 

* Idem, p. 9. 

5 As to Roger Williams, p. 90. 



306 THE QUAKERS. 

Dr. Ellis makes a similar argument regarding the 
Quakers : " It might appear as if good manners, and 
generosity and magnanimity of spirit, would have 
kept the Quakers away. Certainly, by every rule of 
right and reason, they ought to have kept away. They 
had no rights or business here. . . . Most clearly they 
courted persecution, suffering, and death ; and, as the 
magistrates affirmed, 'they rushed upon the sword.' 
Those magistrates never intended them harm, . . . ex- 
cept as they believed that all their successive measures 
and sharper penalties were positively necessary to se- 
cure their jurisdiction from the wildest lawlessness 
and absolute anarchy." ^ His conclusion is : " It is to 
be as frankly and positively affirmed that their Qua- 
ker tormentors were the aggressive party ; that they 
wantonly initiated the strife, and with a dogged per- 
tinacity persisted in outrages which drove the author- 
ities almost to frenzy. . . ." ^ 
*^ The proposition that the Congregationalists owned 
the territory granted by the charter of Charles I. as 
though it were a private estate, has been considered 
in an earlier chapter ; and if the legal views there ad- 
vanced are sound, it is incontrovertible, that all j^eace- 
ful British subjects had a right to dwell in Massa- 
chusetts, provided they did not infringe the monopoly 
in trade. The only remaining question, therefore, is 
whether the Quakers were peaceful. Dr. Ellis, Dr. 
Palfrey, and Dr. Dexter have carefully collected a 
certain number of cases of misconduct, with the view 

1 Mass. and its Early History, p. 110. 

2 Idem, p. 104. 



THE QUAKERS. 307 

of proving that the Friends were turbulent, and the 
government had reasonable grounds for apprehending 
such another outbreak as one which occurred a cen- 
tury before in Germany and is known as the Peas- 
ants' War, Before, however, it is possible to enter 
upon a consideration of the evidence intelligently, it 
is necessary to fix the chronological order of the lead- 
ing events of the persecution. 

The twenty-one years over which it extended may 
be conveniently divided into three periods, of which 
the first began in July, 1656, when Mary Fisher and 
Anne Austin came to Boston, and lasted till Decem- 
ber, 1661, when Charles II. interfered by command- 
ing Endicott to send those under arrest to England 
for trial. Hitherto John Norton had been preeminent, 
but in that same December he was appointed on a 
mission to London, and as he died soon after his re- 
turn, his direct influence on affairs then probably 
ceased. He had been chiefly responsible for the hang- 
ings of 1659 and 1660, but under no circumstances 
could they have been continued, for after four heretics 
had perished, it was found impossible to execute 
Wenlock Christison, who had been condemned, be- 
cause of popular indignation. 

Nevertheless, the respite was brief. In June, 1662, 
the king, in a letter confirming the charter, excluded 
the Quakers from the general toleration which he 
demanded for other sects, and the old legislation was 
forthwith revived ; only as it was found impossible to 
kill the schismatics openly, the inference, from what 



/ 



308 THE QUAKERS. 

occurred subsequently, is unavoidable, that the elders 
sought to attain their purpose by what their reverend 
historians call " a humaner policy," ^ or, in plain Eng- 
lish, by murdering them by flogging and starvation. 
Nor was the device new, for the same stratagem had 
already been resorted to by the East India Company, 
in Hindostan, before they were granted full criminal 
jurisdiction.^ 

The Vagabond Act was too well contrived for com- 
passing such an end, to have been an accident, and 
portions of it strongly suggest the hand of Norton. 
It was passed in May, 1661, when it was becoming 
evident that hanging must be abandoned, and its pro- 
visions can only be explained on the supposition that 
it was the intention to make the infliction of death 
discretionary with each magistrate. It provided that 
any foreign Quaker, or any native upon a second con- 
viction, might be ordered to receive an unlimited 
number of stripes. It is important also to observe 
that the whip was a two-handed implement, armed 
with lashes made of twisted and knotted cord or cat- 
gut.^ There can be no doubt, moreover, that sundry 
of the judgments afterward pronounced would have 
resulted fatally had the people permitted their execu- 
tion. During the autumn following its enactment 
this statute was suspended, but it was revived in about 
ten months. 

^ As to Roger Williams, p. 134. 

2 Mill's British India, i. 48, note. 

' New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 357, note. 



THE QUAKERS. 309 

Endicott's death in 1665 marks the close of the 
second epoch, and ten comparatively tranquil years 
followed. Bellingham's moderation may have been in 
part due to the interference of the royal commission- 
ers, but a more potent reason was the popular dis- 
gust, which had become so strong that the penal laws 
could not be enforced. 

A last effort was made to rekindle the dying flame 
in 1675, by fining constables who failed in their duty 
to break up Quaker meetings, and offering one third 
of the penalty to the informer. Magistrates were re- 
quired to sentence those apprehended to the House of 
Correction, where they were to be kept three days on 
bread and water, and whipped.^ Several suffered 
during this revival, the last of whom was Margaret 
Brewster. At the end of twenty-one years the policy 
of cruelty had become thoroughly discredited and a 
general toleration could no longer be postponed ; but 
this great liberal triumph was only won by heroic 
courage and by the endurance of excruciating tor- 
ments. Marmaduke Stevenson, William Robinson, 
Mary Dyer, and William Leddra were hanged, sev- 
eral were mutilated or branded, two at least are known 
to have died from starvation and whipping, and it is 
probable that others were killed whose fate cannot be 
traced. The number tortured under the Vagabond 
Act is unknown, nor can any estimate be made of the 
misery inflicted upon children by the ruin and exile 
of parents. 

1 Mass. Rec. v. 60. 



310 THE QUAKERS. 

The early Quakers were enthusiasts, and therefore 
occasionally spoke and acted extravagantly ; they also 
adopted some offensive customs, the most objectionable 
of which was wearing the hat ; all this is immaterial. 
The question at issue is not their social attractiveness, 
but the cause whose consequence was a virulent perse- 
cution. This can only be determined by an analysis 
of the evidence. If, upon an impartial review of the 
cases of outrage which have been collected, it shall 
appear probable that the conduct of the Friends was 
sufficiently violent to make it credible that the legis- 
lature spoke the truth, when it declared that " the 
prudence of this court was exercised onely in making 
provission to secure the peace & order heere estab- 
lished against theire attempts, whose designe (wee were 
well assured by our oune experjence, as well as by the 
example of theire predecessors in Munster) was to 
vndermine & ruine the same ; " ^ then the reverend 
historians of the theocracy must be considered to 
have established their proposition. But if, on the other 
hand, it shall seem apparent that the intense vindic- 
tiveness of this onslaught was due to the bigotry and 
greed of power of a despotic priesthood, who saw in 
the spread of independent thought a menace to the 
ascendency of their order, then it must be held to be 
demonstrated that the clergy of New England acted 
in obedience to those natural laws, which have always 
regulated the conduct of mankind. 

1 Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 385. 



J 



THE QUAKERS. 311 

CHRONOLOGY. 

1656, July. First Quakers came to Boston. 

1656, 14 Oct. First act against Quakers passed. 
Providing that ship-masters bringing Quakers should 
be fined XIOO. Quakers to be whipped and impris- 
oned till expelled. Importers of Quaker books to be 
fined. Any defending Quaker opinions to be fined, 
first offence, 406'. ; second, £4 ; third, banishment, 

1657, 14 Oct. By a supplementary act ; Quakers 
returning after one conviction for first offence, for men, 
loss of one ear ; imprisonment till exile. Second of- 
fence, loss other ear, like imprisonment. For females ; 
first offence, whipping, imprisonment. Second offence, 
idem. Third offence, men and women alike ; tongue 
to be bored with a hot iron, imprisonment, exile. ^ 

1658, In this year Rev. John Norton actively ex- 
erted himself to secure more stringent legislation ; 
procured petition to that effect to be presented to 
court. 

1658, 19 Oct. Enacted that undomiciled Quakers 
returning from banishment should be hanged. Dom- 
iciled Quakers upon conviction, refusing to apostatize, 
to be banished, under pain of death on return.^ 

Under this act the following persons -were hanged : 

1659, 27 Oct. Robinson and Stevenson hanged. 

1660, 1 June. Mary Dyer hanged. (Previously 
condemned, reprieved, and executed for returning.) 

1660-1661, 14 Mar. William Leddra hanged. 
1 Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 309. '^ Idem, p. 346. 



312 THE QUAKERS, 

1661, June. Wenlock Christison condemned to 
death ; released. 

1661, 22 May. Vagabond Act. Any person con- 
victed before a county magistrate of being an undomi- 
ciled or vagabond Quaker to be stripped naked to the 
middle, tied to the cart's tail, and flogged from town 
to town to the border. Domiciled Quakers to be pro- 
ceeded against under Act of 1658 to banishment, and 
then treated as vagabond Quakers. The death pen- 
alty was still preserved but not enforced.^ * 

1661, 9 Sept. King Charles II. wrote to Governor 
Endicott directing the cessation of corporal punish- 
ment in regard to Quakers, and ordering the accused 
to be sent to England for trial. 

1661, 27 Nov. Vagabond Act suspended. 

1662, 28 June. The company's agents, Bradstreet 
and Norton, received from the king his letter of par- 
don, etc., wherein, however, Quakers are excepted from 
the demand made for religious toleration. 

1662, 8 Oct. Encouraged by the above letter the 
Vagabond law revived. 

1664-5, 15 March. Death of John Endicott. Bel- 
lingham governor. Commissioners interfere on be- 
half of Quakers in May. The persecution subsides. 

1672, 3 Nov. Persecution revived by passage of 
law punishing persons found at Quaker meeting by 
fine or imprisonment and flogging. Also fining con- 
stables for neglect in making arrests and giving one 
third the fine to informers.^ 

^ Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 3. " Mass. Rec. v. 60. 



1 



THE QUAKERS. 313 

1677, Aug. 9. Margaret Brewster whipped for en- 
tering the Old South in sackcloth. 

TURBULENT QUAKERS. 

1656, Mary Prince. 1662, Deborah Wilson. 

1658, Sarah Gibbons. 1663, Thomas Newhouse. 

" Dorothy Waugh. " Edward Wharton. 

1660, John Smith. 1664, Hannah Wriglit.^ 

1661, Katherine Chatham. " Mary Tomkins. 

" George Wilson. 1665, Lydia Wardwell. 

1662, Elizabeth Hooton. 1677, Margaret Brewster. 

" It was in the month called July, of this present 
year [1656] when Mary Fisher and Ann Austin 
arrived in the road before Boston, before ever a law 
"^?was made there against the Quakers ; and yet they 
•^ were very ill treated ; for before they came ashore, the 
deputy governor, Richard Bellingham (the governor 
himself being out of town) sent officers aboard, who 
searched their trunks and chests, and took away the 
books they found there, which were about one hun- 
dred, and carried them ashore, after having com- 
manded the said women to be kept prisoners aboard ; 
and the said books were, by an order of the council, 
burnt in the market-place by the hangman. . . . And 
then they were shut up close prisoners, and command 
was given that none should come to them without 
leave ; a fine of five pounds being laid on any that 
should otherwise come at, or speak with them, tho' but 
at the window. Their pens, ink, and paper were 
^ Uncertain. 



O 



314 THE QUAKERS. 

taken from them, and they not suffered to have any 
candle-light in the night season ; nay, what is more, 
they were stript naked, under pretence to know 
whether they were witches [a true touch of sacerdo- 
tal malignity] tho' in searching no token was found 
upon them but of innocence. And in this search they 
were so barbarously misused that modesty forbids to 
mention it : And that none might have communica- 
tion with them a board was nailed up before the win- 
dow of the jail. And seeing they were not provided 
with victuals, Nicholas Upshal, one who had lived 
long in Boston, and was a member of the church 
there, was so concerned about it, (liberty being denied 
to send them provision) that he purchas'd it of the 
jailor at the rate of five shillings a week, lest they 
should have starved. And after having been about 
five weeks prisoners, William Chichester, master of a 
vessel, was bound in one hundred pound bond to 
carry them back, and not suffer any to speak with 
them, after they were put on board ; and the jailor 
kept their beds . . . and their Bible, for his fees." ^ 

Endicott was much dissatisfied with the forbearance 
of Bellingham, and declared that had he " been there 
. . . he would have had them well whipp'd." ^ No ex- 
ertion was spared, nevertheless, to get some hold upon 
them, the elders examining them as to matters of faith, 
with a view to ensnare them as heretics. In this, how- 
ever, they were foiled. 

1 Sewel, p. 160. 

2 New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 10. 



THE QUAKERS. 315 

. On the authority of Hutchinson, Dr. Dexter ^ and 
Dr. Palfrey complain ^ that Mary Prince reviled two 
of the ministers, who " with much moderation and ten- 
derness endeavored to convince her of her errors," ^ 
A visitation of the clergy was a form of torment from 
which even the boldest recoiled ; Vane, Gorton, Childe, 
and Anne Hutchinson quailed under it, and though 
the Quakers abundantly proved that they could bear 
stripes with patience, they could not endure this. 
She called them " Baal's priests, the seed of the ser- 
pent." Dr. Ellis also speaks of " stinging objurga- 
tions screamed out . . . from between the bars of 
their prisons." * He cites no cases, but he probably 
refers to the same woman who called to Endicott one 
Sunday on his way from church : " Woe unto thee, 
thou art an oppressor." ^ If she said so she spoke the 
truth, for she was illegally imprisoned, was deprived 
of her property, and subjected to great hardship. 

In October, 1656, the first of the repressive acts 
was passed, by which the " cursed " and " blasphe- 
mous " intruders were condemned to be " comitted to 
the house of correction, and at theire entrance to 
be seuerely whipt and by the master thereof to be 
kept constantly to worke, and none suffered to con- 
verse or speak w*^^ them ; " ^ and any captain know- 
ingly bringing them within the jurisdiction to be fined 
one hundred pounds, with imprisonment till payment. 

1 As to Roger Williams, p. 127. 2 Palfrey, ii. 464. 

» Hutch. Hist. i. 181. ^ Mem. Hist, of Boston, i. 182. 

6 Hutch. Hist. i. 181. « ^^ss. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 278. 



316 THE QUAKERS. 

" When this law was published at the door of 
the aforenamed Nicholas Upshall, the good old man, 
grieved in spirit, publickly testified against it ; for 
which he was the next morning sent for to the Gen- 
eral Court, where he told them that : ' The execution 
of that law would be a forerunner of a judgment upon 
their country, and therefore in love and tenderness 
which he bare to the people and place, desired them 
to take heed, lest they were found fighters against 
God.' For this, he, though one of their church- 
members, and of a blameless conversation, was fined 
=£20 and £2> more for not coming to church, whence 
the sense of their wickedness had induced him to ab- 
sent himself. They also banished him out of their 
jurisdiction, allowing him but one month for his de- 
parture, though in the winter season, and he a weakly 
ancient man : Endicott the governor, when applied to 
on his behalf for a mitigation of his fine, churlishly 
answered, ' I will not bate him a groat.' " ^ 

Although, after the autumn of 1656, whippings, 
fines, and banishments became frequent, no case of 
misconduct is alleged until the 13th of the second 
month, 1658, when Sarah Gibbons and Dorothy 
Waugh broke two bottles in Mr. Norton's church, 
after lecture, to testify to his emptiness ;2 both had 
previously been imprisoned and banished, but the 
ferocity with which Norton at that moment was for- 
cing on the persecution was the probable incentive to 
the trespass. " They were sent to the house of cor- 
rection, where, after being kept three days without 
1 Besse, ii. 181. ^ This charge is unproved. 



THE QUAKERS. 317 

any food, they were cruelly whipt, and kept three clays 
longer without victuals, though they had offered to 
buy some, but were not suffered." ^ 

In 1661 Katharine Chatham walked through Bos- 
ton, in sackcloth. This was during the trial of Chris- 
tison for his life, when the terror culmmatcd, and 
hardly needs comment. 

George Wilson is charged with having " rushed 
through the streets of Boston, shouting : ' The Lord 
is coming with fire and sword I ' " ^ The facts appear 
to be these : in 1661, just before Christison's trial, he 
was arrested, without any apparent reason, and, as 
he was led to prison, he cried, that the Lord was 
coming with fire and sword to plead with Boston.^ 
At the general jail delivery * in anticipation of the 
king's order, he was liberated, but soon rearrested, 
" sentenced to be tied to the cart's tail," and flogged 
with so severe a whip that the Quakers wanted to buy 
it " to send to England for the novelty of the cruelty, 
but that was not permitted." ^ 

Elizabeth Hooton coming from England in 1661, 
with Joan Brooksup, " they were soon clapt up in 
prison, and, upon their discharge thence, being driven 
with the rest two days' journey into the vast, hov. 1- 
ing wilderness, and there left . . . without necessary 
provisions."^ They escaped to Barbadoes. "Uj3on 

1 Besse, ii. 184. 2 ^g to Roger Williams, p. 133. 

' New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 351. 
* Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 19. Order passed 28 May, 166L 
8 Besse, ii. 224. ^ Besse, ii. 228, 229. 



318 THE QUAKERS. 

their coming again to Boston, they were presently ap- 
prehended by a constable, an ignorant and furious 
zealot, who declared, ' It was his delight, and he could 
rejoice in following the Quakers to their execution 
as much as ever.' " Wishing to return once more, 
she obtained a license from the king to buy a house in 
any plantation. Though about sixty, she was seized 
at Dover, where the Rev. Mr. Rayner was settled, put 
into the stocks, and imprisoned four days in the dead 
of winter, where she nearly perished from cold.^ Af- 
terward, at Cambridge, she exhorted the people to 
repentance in the streets,^ and for this crime, which 
is cited as an outrage to Puritan decorum,^ she was 
once more apprehended and " imprisoned in a close, 
stinking dungeon, where there was nothing either to 
lie down or sit on, where she was kept two days and 
two nights without bread or water," and then sen- 
tenced to be whipped through three towns. " At 
Cambridge she was tied to the whipping-post, and 
lashed with ten stripes with a three-stringed whip, 
with three knots at the end : At Watertown she was 
laid on with ten stripes more with rods of willow : At 
Dedham, in a cold frosty morning, they tortured her 
aged body with ten stripes more at a cart's tail." 
The peculiar atrocity of flogging from town to town 
lay in this : that the victim's wounds became cold 

1 Besse, ii. 229. 

2 " Repentance ! Repentance ! A day of howling and sad 
lamentation is coming upon you all from the Lord." 

3 As to Roger Williamsy p. 133. 



THE QUAKERS. 319 

between the times of punishment, and in winter some- 
times frozen, which made the torture intolerably- 
agonizing. Then, as hanging was impossible, other 
means were tried to make an end of her : " Thus 
miserably torn and beaten, they carried her a weary 
journey on horseback many miles into the wilder- 
ness, and toward night left her there among wolves, 
bears, and other wild beasts, who, though they did 
sometimes seize on living persons, were yet to her less 
cruel than the savage - professors of that country. 
When those who conveyed her thither left her, they 
said, ' They thought they should never see her 
more.' " ^ 

The intent to kill is obvious, and yet Elizabeth 
Hooton suffered less than many of those convicted 
and sentenced after public indignation had forced the 
theocracy to adopt what their reverend successors are 
pleased to call the " humaner policy " of the Vaga- 
bond Act.2 

Any want of deference to a clergyman is sure to be 
given a prominent place in the annals of Massachu- 
setts ; and, accordingly, the breaking of bottles in 
church, which happened twice in twenty-one years, is 
never omitted. 

In 1663 " John Liddal, and Thomas Newhouse, 
ha^dng been at meeting " (at Salem), " were appre- 
hended and . . . sentenced to be whipt through three 
towns as vagabonds," which was accordingly done. 

1 Besse, ii. 229. See New England Judged, p. 413. 
"^ As to Roger Williams, p. 134. 



320 THE QUAKERS. 

" Not long after this, the aforesaid Thomas New- 
house was again whipt through the jurisdiction of 
Boston for testifying against the persecutors in their 
meeting-house there ; at which time he, in a prophetick 
manner, having two glass bottles in his hands, threw 
them down, saying, ' so shall you be dashed in 
pieces.' " ^ 

The next turbulent Quaker is mentioned in this 
way by Dr. Dexter : " Edward Wharton was ' pressed 
in spirit ' to repair to Dover and proclaim ' Wo, ven- 
geance, and the indignation of the Lord ' upon the 
court in session there." ^ This happened in the sum- 
mer of 1663, and long ere then he had seen and 
suffered the oppression that makes men mad. He 
was a peaceable and industrious inhabitant of Salem ; 
in 1659 he had seen Robinson and Stevenson done to 
death, and, being deeply moved, he said, " the guilt 
of [their] blood was so great that he could not bear 
it ; " ^ he was taken from his home, given twenty lashes 
and fined twenty pounds ; the next year, just at the 
time of Christison's trial, he was again seized, led 
through the country like a notorious offender, and 
thrown into prison, " where he was kept close, night 
and day, with William Leddra, sometimes in a very 
little room, little bigger than a saw-pit, having no lib- 
erty granted them." 

" Being brought before their court, he again asked, 
' What is the cause, and wherefore have I been 

1 Besse, ii. 232. 2 j,, ^^ Roger Williams, p. 133. 

« Besse, ii. 205. 



THE QUAKERS. 321 

fetcht from my habitation, where I was following my 
honest calling, and here laid up as an evil-doer?' 
They told him, that ' his hair was too long, and that 
he had disobeyed that commandment which saith, 
Honour thy father and mother.' He asked, ' Where- 
in ? ' ' In that you will not,' said they, ' put off your 
hat to magistrates.' Edward replied, ' I love and 
own all magistrates and rulers, who are for the pun- 
ishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that 
do well.' " 1 

Then Rawson pronounced the sentence : " You are 
upon pain of death to depart this jurisdiction, it being 
the 11th of this instant March, by the one and twen- 
tieth of the same, on the pain of death. . . . ' Nay 
[said Wharton], I shall not go away; therefore be 
careful what you do.' " ^ 

And he did not go, but was with Leddra when he 
died upon the tree. On the day Leddra suffered, 
Christison was brought before Endicott, and com- 
manded to renounce his religion ; but he answered : 
"Nay, I shall not change my religion, nor seek to 
save my life ; . . . but if I lose my life for Christ's 
sake and the preaching of the gospel, I shall save 
it." They then sent him back to prison to await his 
doom. At the next court he was brought to the bar, 
where he demanded an appeal to England ; but in the 
midst a letter was brought in from Wharton, signify- 
ing, " That whereas they had banished him on pain of 
death, yet he was at home in his own house at Salem, 

1 Besse, ii. 220. 2 Besse, ii. 221. 



322 THE QUAKERS. 

and therefore proposing, ' That they would take off 
their wicked sentence from him, that he might go 
about his occasions out of their jurisdiction.' " ^ 

Endicott was exasperated to frenzy, for he felt the 
ground crumbling beneath him ; he put the fate of 
Christison to the vote, and failed to carry a condem- 
nation. " The governor seeing this division, said, ' I 
could find it in my heart to go home ; ' being in such 
a rage, that he flung something furiously on the table. 
. . . Then the governor put the court to vote again ; 
but this was done confusedly, which so incensed the 
governor that he stood up and said, ' You that will 
not consent record it : I thank God I am not afraid 
to give judgment. . . . Wenlock Christison, hearken 
to your sentence : You must return unto the place 
from whence you came, and from thence to the place 
of execution, and there you must be hang'd until 
you are dead, dead, dead.' " ^ Thereafter Wharton 
invoked the wrath of God against the theocracy. 

To none of the enormities committed durinof these 
years are the divines more keenly alive than to the 
crime of disturbing what they call "public Sabbath 
worship ; " ^ and since their language conveys the im- 
pression that such acts were not only very common, 
but also unprovoked, whereas the truth is that they 
were rare, it cannot fail to be instructive to relate the 
causes which led to the interruption of the ordination 

1 Besse, ii. 222, 223. 

2 Sewel, p. 279. 

8 As to Roger Williams, p. 139. 



THE QUAKERS. 323 

of that Mr. Higginson, who called the " inner light " 
"a stinking vapour from hell." ^ 

John and Margaret Smith were members of the Sa- 
lem church, and John was a freeman. In 1658, Marga- 
ret became a Quaker, and though in feeble health, she 
was cast into prison, and endured the extremities of 
privation ; her sufferings and her patience so wTought 
upon her husband that he too became a convert, and 
a few weeks before the ceremony wrote to Endicott : 

" O governour, governour, do not think that my love 
to my wife is at all abated, because I sit still silent, 
and do not seek her . . . freedom, which if I did would 
not avail. . . . Upon examination of her, there being 
nothing justly laid to her charge, yet to fulfil your 
wills, it was determined, that she must have ten stripes 
in the open market place, it being very cold, the snow 
lying by the walls, and the wind blowing cold. . . . 
My love is much more increased to her, because I see 
your cruelty so much enlarged to her." ^ 

Yet, though laboring under such intense excite- 
ment, the only act of insubordination wherewith this 
man is charged was saying in a loud voice during the 
service, " AVhat you are going about to set up, our 
God is pulling down." ^ 

Dr. Dexter also speaks with pathos of the youth of 
some of the criminals. 

" Hannah Wright, a mere girl of less than fifteen 
summers, toiled . . . from Oyster Bay ... to Boston, 

* Ordained July 8, 1660. Annals of Salem. 

« Besse, ii. 208, 209. « Hutch. Hist. i. 187. 



324 THE QUAKERS. 

that she might pipe in the ears of the court ' a warn- 
ing in the name of the Lord.' " ^ This appears to 
have happened in 1664,^ yet the name of Hannah 
AVright is recorded among those who were released in 
the general jail delivery in 1661,^ when she was only 
twelve ; and her sister had been banished.^ 

But of all the scandals which have been dwelt on 
for two centuries with such unction, none have been 
made more notorious than certain extravagances com- 
mitted by three women ; and regarding them, the 
reasoning of Dr. Dexter should be read in full. 

" The Quaker of the seventeenth century . . . was 
essentially a coarse, blustering, conceited, disagree- 
able, impudent fanatic ; whose religion gained subjec- 
tive comfort in exact proportion to the objective com- 
fort of which It was able to deprive others ; and which 
broke out into its choicest exhibitions in acts which 
were not only at that time in the nature of a public 
scandal and nuisance, but which even in the brightest 
light of this nineteenth century . . . would subject 
those who should be guilty of them to the immediate 
and stringent attention of the police court. The 
disturbance of public Sabbath worship, and the inde- 
cent exposure of the person — whether conscience be 
pleaded for them or not — are punished, and rightly 
punished, as crimes by every civilized governmento" ^ 

^ As to Roger Williams, p. 133. 

2 Besse, ii. 234. New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 461. 

8 Besse, ii. 224. * jVew England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 461. 

• As to Roger Williams, pp. 138, 139. 



THE QUAKERS. 325 

This paragraph undoubtedly refers to Mary Tom- 
kins, who " on the First Day of the week at Oyster 
River, broke up the service of God's house . . . the 
scene ending in deplorable confusion ; " ^ and to Lydia 
AVardwell and Deborah Wilson, who appeared in 
public naked. 

Mary Tomkins and Alice Ambrose came to Massa- 
chusetts in 1662 ; landing at Dover, they began preach- 
ing at the inn, to which a number of people resorted. 
Mr. Rayner, hearing the news, hurried to the spot, 
and in much irritation asked them what they were 
doing there ? This led to an argument about the 
Trinity, and the authority of ministers, and at last 
the clergyman " in a rage flung away, calling to his 
people, at the window, to go from amongst them," ^ 
Nothing was done at the moment, but toward winter 
the two came back from Maine, whither they had 
gone, and then Mr. Rayner saw his opportunity. He 
caused Richard Walden to prosecute them, and as the 
magistrate was ignorant of the technicalities of the 
law, the elder acted as clerk, and drew up for him 
the following warrant : — 

To the Constables of Dover, Hampton, Salisbury, 
Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, Wenham, Linn, Bos- 
ton, Roxbury, Dedham, and until these vagabond 
Quakers are carried out of this jurisdiction. 
You and every of you are required, in the King's 

^ As to Roger Williams, p. 133. 

2 New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 362. 



326 THE QUAKERS. 

Majesty's name, to take these vagabond Quakers, 
Anne Coleman, Mary Tomkins and Alice Ambrose, 
and make them fast to the cart's tail, and driving 
the cart through your several towns, to whip them on 
their backs, not exceeding ten stripes apiece on each 
of them in each town, and so to convey them from 
constable to constable, till they come out of this 
jurisdiction, as you will answer it at your peril : and 
this shall be your warrant. 

Per me Kichard Walden. 

At Dover, dated December the 22d, 1662.1 

The Rev. John Rayner pronounced judgment of 
death by flogging, for the weather was bitter, the dis- 
tance to be walked was eighty miles, and the lashes 
were given with a whip, whose three twisted, knotted 
thongs cut to the bone. 

" So, in a very cold day, your deputy, Walden, caused 
these women to be stripp'd naked from the middle up- 
ward, and tyed to a cart, and after a while cruelly 
whipp'd them, whilst the priest stood and looked, and 
laughed at it. . . . They went with the executioner to 
Hampton, and through dirt and snow at Salisbury, 
half way the leg deep, the constable forced them after 
the cart's tayl at which he whipp'd them." ^ 

Had the Reverend John Rayner but followed the 
cart, to see that his three hundred and thirty lashes 
were all given with the same ferocity which warmed 
his heart to mirth at Dover, before his journey's end 

1 Besse, u. 227. « New England Judged, pp. 366, 367. 



THE QUAKERS. 327 

he would certainly have joyed in giving thanks to 
God over the women's gory corpses, freezing amid the 
snow. His negligence saved their lives, for when the 
ghastly pilgrims passed through Salisbury, the people 
to their eternal honor set the captives free. 

Soon after, on Sunday, — " Whilst Alice Ambrose 
was at prayer, two constables . . . came . . . and 
taking her . . . dragged her out of doors, and then 
with her face toward the snow, which was knee deep, 
over stumps and old trees near a mile ; when they had 
wearied themselves they . . . left the prisoner in an 
house . . . and fetched Mary Tomkins, whom in like 
manner they dragged with her face toward the snow. 
. . . On the next morning, which was excessive cold, 
they got a canoe . . . and so carried them to the har- 
bour's mouth, threatning, that ' They would now so do 
with them, as that they would be troubled with them no 
more.' The women being unwilling to go, they forced 
them down a very steep place in the snow, dragging 
Mary Tomkins over the stumps of trees to the water 
side, so that she was much bruised, and fainted under 
their hands : They plucked Alice Ambrose into the 
water, and kept her swimming by the canoe in great 
danger of drowning, or being frozen to death. They 
would in all j^robability have proceeded in their wicked 
purpose to the murthering of those three women, had 
they not been prevented by a sudden storm, which 
drove them back to the house again. They kejst the 
women there till near midnight, and then cruelly 
turned them out of doors in the frost and snow, Alice 



328 THE QUAKERS. 

Ambrose's clothes being frozen hard as boards. . . , 
It was observable that those constables, though wicked 
enough of themselves, were animated by a ruling elder 
of their church, whose name corresponded not with his 
actions, for he was called Hate-evil Nutter, he put 
those men forward, and by his presence encouraged 
them." 1 

Subsequently, Mary Tomkins committed the breach 
of the peace complained of, which was an interruption 
of a sermon against Quaker preaching.^ 

Deborah Wilson, one of the women who went 
abroad naked, was insane, the fact appearing of rec- 
ord subsequently as the judgment of the court.^ She 
was flogged. 

Lydia Wardwell was the daughter of Isaac Per- 
kins, a freeman. She married Eliakim Wardwell, 
son of Thomas Wardwell, who was also a citizen. 
They became Quakers ; and the story begins when 
the poor young woman had been a wife just three 
years. " At Hampton, Priest Seaborn Cotton, un- 
derstanding that one Eliakim Wardel had entertained 
Wenlock Christison, went with some of his herd to 
Eliakim's house, having like a sturdy herdsman put 
himself at the head of his followers, with a truncheon 
in his hand." ^ Eliakim was fined for harboring 
Christison, and " a pretty beast for the saddle, worth 
about fourteen pound, was taken . . . the overplus of 

1 Besse, ii. 228. 

2 New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 386. 

^ Quaker Invasion, p. 104. * Sewel, p. 340. 



THE QUAKERS. 329 

\fhich to make up to him, your officers plundred old 
William Marston of a vessel of green ginger, which 
for some fine was taken from him, and forc'd it into 
Eliakim's house, where he let it lie and touched it 
not ; . . . and notwithstanding he came not to your 
invented worship, but was fined ten shillings a day's 
absence, for him and his wife, yet was he often rated 
for priest's hire ; and the priest (Seaborn Cotton, old 
John Cotton's son) to obtain his end and to cover 
himself, sold his rate to a man almost as bad as him- 
self, . . . who coming in pretence of borrowing a little 
corn for himself, which the harmless honest man 
willingly lent him ; and he finding thereby that he 
had corn, which was his design, Judas-like, he went 
. . . and measured it away as he pleased." 

" Another time, the said Eliakim being rated to the 
said priest. Seaborn Cotton, the said Seaborn having 
a mind to a pied heifer Eliakim had, as Ahab had to 
Naboth's vineyard, sent his servant nigh two miles to 
fetch her ; who having robb'd Eliakim of her, brought 
her to his master." . . . 

" Again the said Eliakim was had to your court, 
and being by them fined, they took almost all his 
marsh and meadow-ground from him to satisfie it, 
which was for the keeping his cattle alive in winter 
. . . and [so] seized and took his estate, that they 
plucked from him most of that he had." ^ 

Lydia Wardwell, thus reduced to penury, and 
Bhaken by the daily scenes of unutterable horror 
1 New England Judged, ed. 1703, pp. 374-376. 



330 THE QUAKERS. 

through which she had to pass, was totally unequal 
to endure the strain under which the masculine intel- 
lect of Anne Hutchinson had reeled. She was pur- 
sued by her pastor, who repeatedly commanded her 
to come to church and explain her absence from com- 
munion.^ The miserable creature, brooding over her 
blighted life and the torments of her friends, became 
possessed with the delusion that it was her duty to 
testify against the barbarity of flogging naked women ; 
so she herself went in among them naked for a sign. 
There could be no clearer proof of insanity, for it is 
admitted that in every other respect her conduct was 
exemplary. 

Her judges at Ipswich had her bound to a rough 
post of the tavern, in which they sat, and then, while 
the splinters tore her bare breasts, they had her flesh 
cut from her back with the lash.'^ 

" Thus they served the wife, and the husband 
escaped not free ; ... he taxing Simon Broadstreet, 
... for upbraiding his wife . . . and telling Simon 
of his malitious reproaching of his wife who was an 
honest woman . . , and of that report that went 
abroad of the known dishonesty of Simon's daughter. 
Seaborn Cotton's wife ; Simon in a fierce rage, told the 
court, ' That if such fellows should be suffered to 
speak so in the court, he would sit there no more : ' So 
to please Simon, Eliakim was sentenc'd to be strijjp'd 
from his waste upward, and to be bound to an oak- 

1 Besse, ii. 235. 

2 New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 377. 



THE QUAKERS. 331 

tree that stood by their worship-house, and to be 
whipped fifteen lashes ; ... as they were having him 
out ... he called to Seaborn Cotton ... to come 
and see the work done (so far was he from being 
daunted by their cruelty), who hastned out and fol- 
lowed him thither, and so did old Wiggins, one of the 
magistrates, who when Eliakim was tyed to the tree 
and stripp'd, said ... to the whipper . . . ' Whip him 
a good ; ' which the executioner cruelly performed with 
cords near as big as a man's little finger ; . . . Priest 
Cotton standing near him . . . Eliakim . . . when he was 
loosed from the tree, said to him, amongst the people, 
' Seaborn, hath my py'd heifer calv'd yet ? ' Which 
Seaborn, the priest, hearing stole away like a thief." ^ 

As Margaret Brewster was the last who is known to 
have been whipped, so is she one of the most famous, 
for she has been immortalized by Samuel Sewall, an 
honest, though a dull man. 

"July 8, 1677. New Meeting House Mane: In 
sermon time there came in a female Quaker, in a 
canvas frock, her hair disshevelled and loose like a 
Periwigg, her face as black as ink, led by two other 
Quakers, and two other followed. It occasioned the 
greatest and most amazing uproar that I ever saw. 
Isaiah 1. 12, 14." 2 

In 1675 the persecution had been revived, and the 
stories the woman heard of the cruelties that were 
perpetrated on those of her own faith inspired her 

1 New England Judged, ed. 1703, pp. 377-379. 
^ Mass. Hist. Coll. fifth series, v. 43. 



332 



THE QUAKERS. 



with the craving to go to New England to protest 
against the wrong ; so she journeyed thither, and en- 
tered the Old South one Sunday morning clothed in 
sackcloth, with ashes on her head. 

At her trial she asked for leave to speak : " Gov- 
ernour, I desire thee to hear me a little, for I have 
something to say in behalf of my friends in this place : 
. . . Oh governour ! I cannot but press thee again 
and again, to put an end to these cruel laws that you 
have made to fetch my friends from their peaceable 
meetings, and keep them three days in the house of 
correction, and then whip them for worshipping the 
true and living God : Governour ! Let me entreat 
thee to put an end to these laws, for the desire of my 
soul is, that you may act for God, and then would you 
prosper, but if you act against the Lord and his 
blessed truth, you will assuredly come to nothing, the 
mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." . . . 

" Margaret Brewster, You are to have your clothes 
stript off to the middle, and to be tied to a cart's 
tail at the South Meeting House, and to be drawn 
through the town, and to receive twenty stripes upon 
your naked body." 

" The will of the Lord be done : I am content- 
ed." . . . 

Governour. " Take her away." ^ 

So ends the sacerdotal list of Quaker outrages, for, 
after Margaret Brewster had expiated her crime of 
protesting against the repression of free thought, there 

1 Besse, ii. 263, 264. 



THE QUAKERS. 333 

came a toleration, and with toleration a deep tran- 
quillity, so that the very name of Quaker has become 
synonymous with quietude. The issue between them 
and the Congregationalists must be left to be decided 
upon the legal question of their right as English sub- 
jects to inhabit Massachusetts ; and secondarily upon 
the opinion which shall be formed of their conduct as 
citizens, upon the testimony of those witnesses whom 
the church herself has called. But regarding the 
great fundamental struggle for liberty of individual 
opinion, no presentation of the evidence could be his- 
torically correct which did not include at least one 
example of the fate that awaited peaceful families, un- 
der this ecclesiastical government, who roused the ire 
of the priests. 

Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick were an aged 
couple, members of the Salem church, and Lawrence 
was a freeman. Josiah, their eldest son, was a man ; 
but they had beside a younger boy and girl named 
Daniel and Provided. 

The father and mother were first arrested in 1657 
for harboring two Quakers ; Lawrence was soon re- 
leased, but a Quaker tract was found upon Cassan- 
dra.^ Although no attempt seems to have been made 
to prove heresy to bring the case within the letter of 
the law, the paper was treated as a heretical writing, 
and she was imprisoned for seven weeks and fined 
forty shillings. 

Persecution made converts fast, and in Salem par- 

1 Besse. ii. 183. 



334 THE QUAKERS. 

ticularly a number withdrew from the church and be- 
gan to worship by themselves. All were soon arrested, 
and the three Southwicks were again sent to Boston, 
this time to serve as an example. They arrived on 
the 3d of February, 1657 ; without form of trial they 
were whipped in the extreme cold weather and im- 
prisoned eleven days. Their cattle were also seized 
and sold to pay a fine of X4 13s. for six weeks' ab- 
sence from worship on the Lord's day. 

The next summer, Leddra, who was afterwards 
hanged, and William Brend went to Salem, and sev- 
eral persons were seized for meeting with them, 
among whom were the Southwicks. A room was pre- 
pared for the criminals in the Boston prison by board- 
ing up the windows and stopping ventilation.^ They 
were refused food unless they worked to pay for it ; 
but to work when wrongfully confined was against 
the Quaker's conscience, so tliey did not eat for five 
days. On the second day of fasting they were flogged, 
and then, with wounds imdressed, the men and women 
together were once more locked in the dark, close 
room, to lie upon the bare boards, in the stifling July 
heat; for they were not given beds. On the fourth 
day they were told they might go if they would pay 
the jail fees and the constables ; but they refused, and 
so were kept in prison. On the morrow the jailer, 
thinking to bring them to terms, put Brend in irons, 
neck and heels, and he lay without food for sixteen 
hours upon his back lacerated with flogging. 
1 New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 64- 



THE QUAKERS. 335 

The next day the miserable man was ordered to 
work, but he lacked the strength, had he been willing, 
for he was weak from starvation and pain, and stiff- 
ened by the irons. And now the climax came. The 
jailer seized a tarred rope and beat him till it broke ; 
then, foaming with fury, he dragged the old man down 
stairs, and, with a new rope, gave him ninety-seven 
blows, when his strength failed ; and Brend, his flesh 
black and beaten to jelly, and his bruised skin hang- 
ing in bags full of clotted blood, was thrust into his 
cell. There, upon the floor of that dark and fetid 
den, the victim fainted. But help was at hand ; an 
outcry was raised, the people could bear no more, the 
doors were opened, and he was rescued.^ 

The indignation was deep, and the government was 
afraid. Endicott sent his own doctor, but the surgeon 
said that Brend's flesh would " rot from off his bones," 
and he must die. And now the mob grew fierce and 
demanded justice on the ruffian who had done this 
deed, and the magistrates nailed a paper on the 
church door promising to bring him to trial. 

Then it was that the true spirit of his order blazed 
forth in Norton, for the jailer was fashioned in his 
own image, and he threw over him the mantle of the 
holy church. He made the magistrates take the paper 
down, rebuking them for their faintness of heart, say- 
ing to them : — 

William " Brend endeavoured to beat our gospel 
ordinances black and blue, if he then be beaten black 
1 New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. QQ. 



336 THE QUAKERS. 

and blue, it is but just upon him, and I will appear in 
his behalf that did so." ^ And the man was justified, 
and commanded to whip " the Quakers in prison . . . 
twice a week, if they refused to work, and the first 
time to add five stripes to the former ten, and each 
time to add three to them. . . . Which order ye sent 
to the jaylor, to strengthen his hands to do yet more 
cruelly ; being somewhat weakened by the fright of 
his former doings." ^ 

After this the Southwicks, being still unable to ob- 
tain their freedom, sent the following letter to the 
magistrates, which is a good example of the writings 
of these " coarse, blustering, . . . impudent fanat- 
ics : " 3 — 

J7iis to the Magistrates at Court in Salem. 
Friends, 

Whereas it was your pleasures to commit us, whose 
names are under-written, to the house of correction 
in Boston, altho' the Lord, the righteous Judge of 
heaven and earth, is our witness, that we had done 
nothing worthy of stripes or of bonds ; and we being 
committed by your court, to be dealt withal as the 
law provides for foreign Quakers, as ye please to term 
us ; and having some of us, suffered your law and 
pleasures, now that which we do expect, is, that where- 
as we have suffei-ed your law, so now to be set free by 

1 Besse, ii. 186. 

2 New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 67. 
* As to Roger Williams, p. 138. 



THE QUAKERS. 337 

the same law, as your manner is with strangers, and 
not to put us in upon the account of one law, and 
execute another law upon us, of which, according to 
your own manner, we were never convicted as the law 
expresses. If you had sent us upon the account of 
your new law, we should have expected the jaylor's 
order to have been on that account, which that it was 
not, appears by the warrant which we have, and the 
punishment which we bare, as four of us were whipp'd, 
among whom was one that had formerly been whipp'd, 
so now also according to your former law. Friends, 
let it not be a small thing in your eyes, the exposing 
as much as in you lies, our families to mine. It 's 
not unknown to you the season, and the time of the 
year, for those that live of husbandry, and what their 
cattle and families may be exposed unto ; and also 
such as live on trade ; we know if the spirit of Christ 
did dwell and rule in you, these things would take 
impression on your spirits. What our lives and 
conversations have been in that place, is well known ; 
and what we now suffer for, is much for false reports, 
and ungrounded jealousies of heresie and sedition. 
These thing lie upon us to lay before you. As for our 
parts, we have true peace and rest in the Lord in all 
our sufferings, and are made willing in the power and 
strength of God, freely to offer up our lives in this 
cause of God, for which we suffer; Yea and we do 
find (through grace) the enlargements of God in our 
imprisoned state, to whom alone we commit ourselves 
and families, for the disposing of us according to his 



338 THE QUAKERS. 

infinite wisdom and pleasure, in whose love is our 
rest and life. 



From the House of Bondage in Boston wherein 
we are made captives by the wills of men, al- 
though made free by the Son, John 8, 36. In 
which we quietly rest, this 16th of the 5th 
month, 1658. 

Lawrence \ 
Cassandra v Southwick 

JOSIAH j 

Samuel Shattock 
Joshua Buffum.^ 

What the prisoners apprehended was being kept in 
prison and punished under an ex post facto law, and this 
was precisely what was done. When brought into court 
they demanded to be told the crime wherewith they 
were charged. They were answered : "It was ' En- 
tertaining the Quakers who were their enemies ; not 
coming to their meetings ; and meeting by themselves.' 
They adjoyned, ' That as to those things they had al- 
ready fastned their law upon them.' ... So ye had 
nothing left but the hat, for which (then) ye had no 
law. They answered — that they intended no offence 
to ye in coming thither . . . for it was not their man- 
ner to have to do with courts. And as for withdraw- 
ing from their meetings, or keeping on their hats, or 
doing anything in contempt of them, or their laws, 
1 New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 74. 



II 



THE QUAKERS. 339 

they said, the Lord was their witness . . . that they 
did it not. So ye rose up, and bid the jay lor take 
them away." ^ 

An acquittal seemed certain ; yet it was intoler- 
able to the clergy that these accursed blasphemers 
should elude them when they held them in their 
grasp ; wherefore, the next day, the Rev. Charles 
Chauncy, preaching at Thursday lecture, thus taught 
Christ's love for men : " Suppose ye should catch six 
wolves in a trap . . . [there were six Salem Quakers] 
and ye cannot prove that they killed either sheep or 
lambs ; and now ye have them they will neither bark 
nor bite : yet they have the plain marks of wolves. 
Now I leave it to your consideration whether ye will 
let them go alive, yea or nay." ^ 

Then the divines had a consultation, " and your 
priests were put to it, how to prove them as your law 
had said : and ye had them before you again, and 
your priests were with you, every one by his side (so 
came ye to your court) and John Norton must ask 
them questions, on purpose to ensnare them, that by 
your standing law for hereticks, ye might condemn 
them (as your priests before consulted) and when this 
would not do (for the Lord was with them, and made 
them wiser than your teachers) ye made a law to ban- 
ish them, upon pain of death. . . ." ^ 

After a violent struggle, the ministers, under Nor- 
ton's lead, succeeded, on the 19th of October, 1658, 

^ New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 85. 

2 Idem, pp. 85, 86. 3 i^i^jn^ p. 87. 



340 THE QUAKERS. 

in forcing the capital act through the legislature, 
which contained a clause making the denial of rever- 
ence to superiors, or in other words, the wearing the 
hat, evidence of Quakerism.^ 

On that very day the bench ordered the prisoners 
at Ipswich to be brought to the bar, and the South- 
wicks were bidden to depart before the spring elec- 
tions.^ They did not go, and in May were once more 
in the felon's dock. They asked what wrong they 
had done. The judges told them they were rebellious 
for not going as they had been commanded. The old 
man and woman piteously pleaded " that they had no 
otherwhere to go," nor had they done anything to 
deserve banishment or death, though <£100 (all they 
had in the world) had been taken from them for 
meeting together.^ 

" Major-General Dennison replied, that ' they stood 
against the authority of the country, in not submitting 
to their laws : that he should not go about to speak 
much concerning the error of their judgments : but,' 
added he, ' you and we are not able well to live to- 
gether, and at present the power is in our hand, and 
therefore the stronger must send off.' " * 

The father, mother, and son were banished under 
pain of death. The aged couple were sent to Shelter 
Island, but their misery was well-nigh done ; they 

^ New England Judged, ed. 1703, pp. 100, 101 ; Mass, Rec. 
vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 346. 

2 Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 349. 

8 New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 106. * Besse, ii. 198. 



THE QUAKERS. 341 

perished within a few days of each other, tortured to 
death by flogging and starvation. 

Josiah was shipped to England, but afterward re- 
turned, was seized, and in the " seventh month, 16G1, 
you had him before you, and at which according to 
your former law, he should have been tried for his 
life." 

" But the great occasion you took against him, was 
his hat, which you commanded him to pull off : ' He 
told your governour he could not.' You said, ' He 
would not.' He told you, ' It was a cross to his will 
to keep it on ; . . . and that he could not do it for 
conscience sake.' . . . But your governour told him, 
' That he was to have been tryed for his life, but that 
you had made your late law to save his life, which, 
you said, was mercy to him.' Then he asked you, 
' Whether you were not as good to take his life now, 
as to whip him after your manner, twelve or fourteen 
times at the cart's tail, through your towns, and then 
put him to death afterward ? ' " He was condenmed 
to be flogged through Boston, Roxbury, and Ded- 
ham ; but he, when he heard the judgment, " with 
arms stretched out, and hands spread before you, said, 
' Here is my body, if you want a further testimony of 
the truth I profess, take it and tear it in pieces . . . 
it is freely given up, and as for your sentence I matter 
it not.' " 1 

This coarse, blustering, impudent fanatic had, in- 
deed, " with a dogged pertinacity persisted in out- 
^ New England Judged, ed. 1703, pp. 354:-356. 



342 THE QUAKERS. 

rasres which " had driven " the authorities almost to 
f reiizy ; " therefore they tied him to a cart and lashed 
him for fifteen miles, and while he " sang to the 
praise of God," his tormentor swung with all his 
might a tremendous two-handed whip, whose knotted 
thongs were made of twisted cat-gut ; ^ " thence he was 
carried fifteen miles from any town into the wilder- 
ness. -^ 

An end had been made of the grown members of 
the family, but the two children were still left. To 
reach them, the device was conceived of enforcing 
the penalty for not attending church, since " it was 
well known they had no estate, their parents being al- 
ready brought to poverty by their rapacious persecu- 
tors." ^ 

Accordingly, they were summoned and asked to ac- 
count for their absence from worship. Daniel an- 
swered " that if they had not so persecuted his father 
and mother perhaps he might have come." * They 
were fined ; and on the day on which they lost their 
parents forever, the sale as slaves of this helpless boy 
and girl was authorized to satisfy the debt.^ 

Edmund Batter, treasurer of Salem, brought the 
children to the town, and went to a shipmaster who 
was about to sail, to engage a passage to Barbadoes. 

1 New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 357, note. 

2 Besse, ii. 225. 
8 Sewel, p. 223. 

4 New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 381. 
* Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 366. 



THE QUAKERS. 343 

The captain made the excuse that they would cor- 
rupt his ship's company. " Oh, no," said Batter, 
" you need not fear that, for they are poor harmless 
creatures, and will not hurt any body." ..." Will 
they not so ? " broke out the sailor, " and will ye offer 
to make slaves of so harmless creatures ? " ^ 

Thus were free-born English subjects and citizens 
of Massachusetts dealt with by the priesthood that 
ruled the Puritan Commonwealth. 

None but ecclesiastical partisans can doubt the bear- 
ing of such evidence. It was the mortal struggle be- 
tween conservatism and liberality, between repression 
and free thought. The elders felt it in the marrow of 
their bones, and so declared it in their laws, denoun- 
cing banishment under pain of death against those 
" adhering to or approoving of any knoune Quaker, or 
the tenetts & practices of the Quakers, . . . manifest- 
ing thereby theire compljance w*^ those whose designe 
it is to ouerthrow the order established in church and 
comonwealth." ^ 

Dennison spoke with an unerring instinct when he 
said they could not live together, for the faith of the 
Friends was subversive of a theocracy. Their belief 
that God revealed himself directly to man led with 
logical certainty to the substitution of individual judg- 
ment for the rules of conduct dictated by a sacred 
class, whether they claimed to derive their authority 
from their skill in interpreting the Scriptures, or from 

1 New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 112. 
* Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 346. 



344 THE QUAKERS. 

traditions preserved by Apostolic Succession. Each 
man, therefore, became, as it were, a priest unto him- 
self, and they rejoudiated an ordained ministry. Hence, 
their crime resembled that of Jeroboam, the son of 
Nebat, who " made priests of the lowest of the people, 
which were not of the sons of Levi ; " ^ and it was for 
this reason that John Norton and John Endicott re- 
solved upon their extermination, even as Elisha and 
Jehu conspired to exterminate the house of Ahab. 

That they failed was due to no mercy for their vic- 
tims, nor remorse for the blood they made to flow, but 
to their inability to control the people. Nothing is 
plainer upon the evidence, than that popular sym- 
pathy was never with the ecclesiastics in their fero- 
cious policy ; and nowhere does the contrast of feeling 
shine out more clearly than in the story of the hanging 
of Kobinson and Stevenson. 

The figure of Norton towers above his contempora- 
ries. He held the administration in the hollow of his 
hand, for Endicott was his mouthpiece ; yet even he, 
backed by the whole power of the clergy, barely suc- 
ceeded in forcing through the Chamber of Deputies the 
statute inflicting death. 

" The priests and rulers were all for blood, and they 
pursued it. . . . This the deputies withstood, and it 
could not pass, and the opposition grew strong, for the 
thing came near. Deacon Wozel was a man much af- 
fected therewith ; and being not well at that time that 

^ Jeroboam's sin is discussed in Ne Sutor, p. 25 ; Divine Right 
yf Infant Baptism, p. 26. 



THE QUAKERS. 345 

he supposed the vote might pass, he earnestly desired 
the speaker ... to send for him when it was to be, 
lest by his absence it might miscarry. The deputies 
that were against the . . . law, thinking themselves 
strong enough to cast it out, forbore to send for him. 
The vote was put and carried in the affirmative, — 
the speaker and eleven being in the negative and thir- 
teen in the affirmative : so one vote carried it ; which 
troubled Wozel so . . . that he got to the court, . . . 
and wept for grief, . . . and said ' If he had not been 
able to go, he would have crept upon his hands and 
knees, rather than it should have been.' " ^ 

After the accused had been condemned, the people, 
being strongly moved, flocked about the prison, so 
that the magistrates feared a rescue, and a guard was 
set. 

As the day approached the murmurs grew, and on 
the morning of the execution the troops were under 
arms and the streets patrolled. Stevenson and Robin- 
son were loosed from their fetters, and Mary Dyer, 
who also was to die, walked between them; and so 
they went bravely hand in hand to the scaffold. The 
prisoners were put behind the drums, and their voices 
drowned when they tried to speak ; for a great multi- 
tude was about them, and at a word, in theii* deep ex- 
citement, would have risen.^ 

As the solemn procession moved along, they came to 
where the Reverend John Wilson, the Boston pastor, 

1 New England Judged, ed. 1703, pp. 101, 102. 

2 Idem, pp. 122, 123. 



346 THE QUAKERS. 

stood with others of the clergy. Then Wilson " fell a 
taunting at Robinson, and, shaking his hand in a light, 
scoffing manner, said, ' Shall such Jacks as you come 
in before authority with your hats on ? ' with many 
other taunting words." Then Robinson replied, " Mind 
you, mind you, it is for the not putting off the hat we 
are put to death." ^ 

When they reached the gallows, Robinson calmly 
climbed the ladder and spoke a few words. He told 
the people they did not suffer as evil-doers, but as 
those who manifested the truth. He besought them to 
mind the light of Christ within them, of which he tes- 
tified and was to seal with his blood. 

He had said so much when Wilson broke in upon 
him : " Hold thy tongue, be silent ; thou art going tq 
dye with a lye in thy mouth." ^ Then they seized him 
and bound him, and so he died ; and his body was 
" cast into a hole of the earth," where it lay uncovered. 

Even the voters, the picked retainers of the church, 
were almost equally divided, and beyond that narrow 
circle the tide of sympathy ran strong. 

The Rev. John Rayner stood laughing with joy to 
see Mary Tomkins and Alice Ambrose flogged through 
Dover, on that bitter winter day ; but the men of 
Salisbury cut those naked, bleeding women from the 
cart, and saved them from their awful death. 

The Rev. John Norton sneered at the tortures of 
Brend, and brazenly defended his tormentor ; but the 

^ New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 124. 
3 Idem, p. 125. 



THE QUAKERS. 347 

Boston mob succored the victim as he lay fainting on 
the boards of his dark cell. 

The Rev. Charles Chauncy, preaching the word of 
God, told his hearers to kill the Southwicks like 
wolves, since he could not have their blood by law ; 
but the honest sailor broke out in wrath when asked 
to traffic in the flesh of our New England children. 

The Rev. John Wilson jeered at Robinsan on his 
way to meet his death, and reviled him as he stood 
beneath the gibbet, over the hole that was his grave ; 
but even the savage Endicott knew well that all the 
trainbands of the colony could not have guarded 
Christison to the gallows from the dungeon where he 
lay condemned. 

Yet awful as is this Massachusetts tragedy, it is 
but a little fragment of the sternest struggle of the 
modern world. The power of the priesthood lies in 
submission to a creed. In their onslaughts on rebel- 
lion they have exhausted human torments ; nor, in 
their lust for earthly dominion, have they felt remorse, 
but rather joy, when slaying Christ's enemies and 
their own. The horrors of the Inquisition, the Mas- 
sacre of St. Bartholomew, the atrocities of Laud, the 
abominations of the Scotch Kirk, the persecution of 
the Quakers, had one object, — the enslavement of 
the mind. 

Freedom of thought is the greatest triumph over - 
tyranny that brave men have ever won ; for this they 
fought the wars of the Reformation ; for this they 
have left their bones to whiten upon unnumbered 



348 THE QUAKERS. 

fields of battle ; for this they have gone by thousands 
to the dungeon, the scaffold, and the stake. We owe 
to their heroic devotion the most priceless of our 
treasures, our perfect liberty of thought and speech ; 
and all who love our country's freedom may well rev- 
erence the memory of those martyred Quakers by 
whose death and agony the battle in New England 
has been won. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE SCIKE FACIAS. 

Had tlie Puritan Commonwealth been in reality 
the thin": which its historians have described : had it 
been a society guided by men devoted to civil liberty, 
and as liberal in religion as was consistent with the 
temper of their age, the early relations of Massachu- 
setts toward Great Britain might now be a pleasanter 
study for her children. Cordiality toward Charles I. 
would indeed have been impossible, for the Puritans 
well knew the fate in store for them should the court 
triumph. Gorges was the representative of the des- 
potic policy toward America, and so early as 1634, 
probably at his instigation. Laud became the head of 
a commission, with absolute control over the planta- 
tions, while the next year a writ of quo warranto was 
brought against the patent.^ With Naseby, however, 
these dangers vanished, and thenceforward there would 
have been nothing to mar an affectionate confidence 
in both Parliament and the Protector. 

In fact, however, Massachusetts was a petty state, 
too feeble for independence, yet ruled by an autocratic 
priesthood whose power rested upon legislation antag- 
onistic to English law ; therefore the ecclesiastics 
^ See introduction to New Canaan, Prince Sec. ed. 



350 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

^ were jealous of Parliament, and had little love for 
Cromwell, whom they found wanting in " a thorough 
testimony against the blasphemers of our days." ^ 
The result was that the elders clung obstinately to 

v every privilege which served their ends, and repudi- 

V ated every obligation which conflicted with their am- 
bition. Clerical political morality seldom fails to be 
instructive, and the following example is typical of that 
peculiar mode of reasoning. The terms of admission 
to ordinary corporations were fixed by each organiza- 
tion for itself, but in case of injustice the courts could 
give relief by setting aside unreasonable ordinances, 
and sometimes Parliament itself would interfere, as it 
did upon the petition against the exactions of the Mer- 
chant Adventurers. Now there was nothing upon 
which the theocracy more strongly insisted than that 

^ " our charter doeth expresly give vs an absolute & 
free choyce of our oune members ; " ^ because by means 

V of a religious test the ministers could pack the con- 
, stituencies with their tools ; but on the other hand 

they as strenuously argued " that no appeals or other 
ways of interrupting our proceedings do lie against 
us," ^ because they well knew that any bench of judges 
before whom such questions might come would annul 
the most vital of their statutes as repugnant to the 
British Constitution. 

Unfortunately for these churchmen, their objects, 

1 Diary of Hull, Palfrey, ii. 400, 401, and note. 
'"■ Mass. Rec. v. 287. 
« Winthrop, ii. 283. 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 351 

as ecclesiastical politicians, could seldom be reconciled 
with their duty as English subjects. At the outset, 
though made a corporation within the realm, they felt 
constrained to organize in America to escape judicial 
supervision. They were then obliged to incorporate 
towns and counties, to form a representative assembly, 
and to levy general taxes and duties, none of which 
things they had jDower to do. Still, such irregularities 
as these, had they been all, most English statesmen 
would have overlooked as unavoidable. But when it 
came to adopting a criminal code based on the Penta- 
teuch, and, in support of a dissenting form of worship, 
fining and imprisoning, whipping, mutilating, and 
hanging English subjects without the sanction of 
English law ; when, finally, the Episcopal Church it- 
self was suppressed, and peaceful subjects were ex- 
cluded from the corporation for no reason but because 
they partook of her communion, and were forbidden 
to seek redress by appealing to the courts of their 
king, it seems impossible that any self-respecting gov- 
ernment could have long been passive. 

At the Restoration Massachusetts had orrown arro- 
gant from long impunity. She thought the time of 
reckoning would never come, and even in trivial mat- 
ters seemed to take a pride in slighting Great Britain 
and in vaunting her independence. Laws were en- 
acted in the name of the Commonwealth, the king's 
name was not in the writs, nor were the royal arms 
upon the public buildings ; even the oath of allegiance 
was rejected, though it was unobjectionable in form. 



352 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

She had grown to believe that were offence taken she 
had only to invent pretexts for delay, to have her 
fault forgotten in some new revolution. General 
Denison, at the Quaker trials, put the popular belief 
in a nut-shell : " This year ye will go to complain to 
the Parliament, and the next year they will send to 
see how it is ; and the third year the government is 
changed." ^ 

But, beside these irritating domestic questions, the 
corporation was bitterly embroiled with its neighbors. 
Samuel Gorton and his friends were inhabitants of 
Rhode Island, and were, no doubt, troublesome to deal 
with; but their particular offence was ecclesiastical. 
An armed force was sent over the border and they 
were seized. They were brought to Boston and tried 
on the charge of being " blasphemous enemies of the 
true religion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of all his 
holy ordinances, and likewise of all civil government 
among his people, and particularly within this juris- 
diction." ^ All the magistrates but three thought that 
Gorton ought to die, but he was finally sentenced to 
an imprisonment of barbarous cruelty. The invasion 
of Rhode Island was a violation of an independent 
jurisdiction, the arrest was illegal, the sentence an 
arbitrary outrage.*^ 

Massachusetts was also at feud in the north, and 
none of her quarrels brought more serious results than 

1 Sewel, p. 280. 2 Winthrop, ii. 146. 

3 See paper of Mr. Charles Deane, New Eng. Historical and 
Genealogical Register^ vol. iv. 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 353 

this with the proprietors of New Hampshire and 
Maine. The grant in the charter was of all lands 
between the Charles and Merrimack, and also all 
lands within the space of three miles to the northward 
of the said Merrimack, or to the northward of any 
part thereof, and all lands lying within the limits 
aforesaid from the Atlantic to the South Sea. 

Clearly the intention was to give a margin of three 
miles beyond a river which was then supposed to flow 
from west to east, and accordingly the territory to the 
north, being unoccupied, was granted to Mason and 
Gorges. Nor was this construction questioned before 
1639 — the General Court having at an early day 
measured off the three miles and marked the boun- 
dary by what was called the Bound House. 

Gradually, however, as it became known that the 
Merrimack rose to the north, larger claims were made. 
In 1641 the four New Hampshire towns were ab- 
sorbed with the consent of their inhabitants, who thus 
gained a regular government ; another happy con- 
sequence was the settlement of sundry eminent di- 
vines, by whose ministrations the people " were very- 
much civilized and reformed."^ 

In 1652 a survey was made of the whole river, and 
43° 40' 12" was fixed as the latitude of its source. A 
line extended east from three miles north of this point 
came out near Portland, and the intervening space 
was forthwith annexed. The result of such a policy 
was that Charles had hardly been crowned before 
1 ^Jeal's New England, i. 210. 



354 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

complaints poured in from every side. Quakers, Bap- 
tists, Episcopalians, all who had suffered persecution, 
flocked to the foot of the throne; and beside these 
came those who had been injured in their estates, fore- 
most of whom were the heirs of Mason and Gorges. 
The pressure was so great and the outcry so loud that, 
in September, 1660, it was thought in London a gov- 
ernor-general would be sent to Boston ; ^ and, in point 
of fact, almost the first communication between the 
king and his colony was his order to spare the Qua- 
kers. 

The outlook was gloomy, and there was hesitation 
as to the course to pursue. At length it was decided 
to send Norton and Bradstreet to England to present 
an address and protect the public interests. The mis- 
sion was not agreeable ; Norton especially was reluct- 
ant, and with reason, for he had been foremost in the 
Quaker persecutions, and was probably aware that in 
the eye of English law the executions were homicide. 

However, after long vacillation, " the Lord so en- 
couraged and strengthened " his heart that he ven- 
tured to sail.^ So far as the crown was concerned 
apprehension was needless, for Lord Clarendon was 
prime minister, whose policy toward New England 
was throughout wise and moderate, and the agents 
were well received. Still they were restless in Lon- 
don, and Sewel tells an anecdote which may partly 
account for their impatience to be gone. 

^ Leverett to Endicott. Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. ii. 40. 
2 Feb. 11, 16G1-2. Palfrey, ii. 524. 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 355 

" Now the deputies of New England came to Lon- 
don, and endeavored to clear themselves as much as 
possible, but especially priest Norton, who bowed no 
less reverently before the archbishop, than before the 
king. . . . 

'■'' They would fain have altogether excused them- 
selves ; and priest Norton thought it sufficient to say 
that he did not assist in the bloody trial, nor had ad- 
vised to it. But John Copeland, whose ear was cut 
off at Boston, charged the contrary upon him : and G. 
Fox, the elder, got occasion to speak with them in 
the presence of some of his friends, and asked Simon 
Broadstreet, one of the New England magistrates, 
' whether he had not a hand in putting to death those 
they nicknamed Quakers ? ' He not being able to 
deny this confessed he had. Then G. Fox asked him 
and his associates that were present, ' whether they 
would acknowledge themselves to be subjects to the 
laws of England ? and if they did by what law they 
had put his friends to death ? ' They answered, 
'They were subjects to the laws of England ; and they 
had put his friends to death by the same law, as the 
Jesuits were put to death in England.' Hereupon 
G. Fox asked, ' whether they did believe that those 
his friends, whom they had put to death, were Jesuits, 
or jesuitically affected ? ' They said ' Nay.' ' Then,' 
replied G. Fox, ' ye have murdered them ; for since ye 
put them to death by the law that Jesuits are put to 
death here in England, it plainly appears, you have 
put them to death arbitrarily, without any law.' Thus 



356 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

Broadstreet, finding himself and his company ensnai''d 
by their own words, ask'd, ' Are you come to catch 
us ? ' But he told them ' They had catch'd them- 
selves, and they might justly be questioned for their 
lives ; and if the father of William Robinson (one of 
those that were put to death) were in town, it was 
probable he would question them, and bring their lives 
into jeopardy. For he not being of the Quakers per- 
suasion, would perhaps not have so much regard to 
the point of forbearance, as they had.' Broadstreet 
seeing himself thus in danger began to flinch and to 
sculk ; for some of the old royalists were earnest with 
the Quakers to prosecute the New England perse- 
cutors. But G. Fox and his friends said, ' They left 
them to the Lord, to whom vengeance belonged, and 
he would repay it.' Broadstreet however, not think- 
ing it safe to stay in England, left the city, and with 
his companions went back again to New England." ^ 

The following June the agents were given the king's 
answer ^ to their address and then sailed for home. 
It is certainly a most creditable state paper. The 
people of Massachusetts were thanked for their good 
will, they were promised oblivion for the past, and 
were assured that they should have their charter con- 
firmed to them and be safe in all their privileges and 
liberties, provided they would make certain reforms in 
their government. They were required to repeal such 
statutes as were contrary to the laws of England, to 

1 Sewel, p. 288. 

2 1662, June 28. 






THE SCIRE FACIAS. 357 

take the oath of allegiance, and to administer justice 
in the king's name. And then followed two proposi- 
tions that were crucial : " And since the principle 
and foundation of that charter was and is the freedom 
of liberty of conscience, wee do hereby charge and 
require you that that freedom and liberty be duely 
admitted," especially in favor of those " that desire to 
use the Book of Common Prayer." And secondly, 
" that all the freeholders of competent estates, not 
vicious in conversations, orthodox in religion (though 
of different perswasions concerning church govern- 
ment) may have their vote in the election of all offi- 
cers civill or millitary." * 

However judicious these reforms may have been, or 
howsoever strictly they conformed with the spirit of 
English law, was immaterial. They struck at the 
root of the secular power of the clergy, and they 
roused deep indignation. The agents had braved no 
little danger, and had shown no little skill in behalf 
of the commonwealth ; and the fate of John Norton 
enables us to realize the rancor of theological feeling. 
The successor of Cotton, by general consent the lead- 
ing minister, in some respects the most eminent man 
in Massachusetts, he had undertaken a difficult mis- 
sion against his will, in which he had acquitted him- 
self well ; yet on his return he was so treated by his 
brethren and friends that he died in the spring of a 
broken heart.^ 

1 Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. ii. 101-103. 

2 April 5, 1663. 



858 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

The General Court took no notice of the king's de- 
mands except to order the writs to run in the royal 
name.^ And it is a sign of the boldness, or else of 
the indiscretion, of those in power, that this crisis was 
chosen for striking a new coin,^ — an act confessedly 
illegal and certain to give offence in England, both as 
an assumption of sovereignty and an interference with 
the currency. 

From the first Lord Clarendon paid some attention 
to colonial affairs, and he appears to have been much 
dissatisfied with the condition in which he found 
them. At length, in 1664, he decided to send a com- 
mission to New England to act upon the spot. 

Great pressure must have been brought by some 
who had suffered, for Samuel Maverick, the Epis- 
copalian, who had been fined and imprisoned in 
1646 for petitioning with Childe, was made a mem- 
ber. Colonel Richard Nichols, the head of the board, 
was a man of ability and judgment ; the choice of Sir 
Robert Carr and Colonel George Cartwriglit was less 
judicious. 

The commissioners were given a public and private 
set of instructions,^ and both were admirable. They 
were to examine the condition of the country and its 
laws, and, if possible, to make some arrangement by 
which the crown might have a negative at least upon 
the choice of the governor ; they were to urge the re. 

1 Oct. 8, 1662. Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 58. 

2 1662, May 7. 

8 Public Instructions, Hutch. Hist. i. 459. 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 359 

forms already demanded by the king, especially a 
larger toleration, for " they doe in truth deny that 
liberty of conscience to each other, which is equally 
provided for and granted to every one of them by 
their charter." ^ They were directed to be concilia- 
tory toward the people, and under no circumstances 
to meddle with public worship, nor were they to press 
for any sudden enforcement of the revenue acts. On 
one point alone they were to insist : they were in- 
structed to sit to hear appeals in causes in which 
the parties alleged they had been wronged by colo- 
nial decisions. 

Unquestionably the chancellor was right in prin- 
ciple. The only way whereby such powerful corpora- 
tions as the trade -guilds or the East India Company 
could be kept from acts of oppression was through the 
appellate jurisdiction, by which means their enact- 
ments could be brought before the courts, and those 
annulled which in the opinion of the judges tran- 
scended the charters. The Comjiany of Massachu- 
setts Bay was a corporation having jurisdiction over 
many thousand English subjects, only a minority of 
whom were freemen and voters. So long, therefore, 
as she remained within the empire, the crown was 
bound to see that the privileges of the English Consti- 
tution were not denied within her territory. Yet, 
though this is true, it is equally certain that the erec- 
tion of a commission of appeal without an act of Par- 
liament was irregular. The stretch of prerogative, 
1 Private Instructions, G'Callaghnn Documents, iii. 58. 



860 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

nevertheless, cannot be considered oppressive when it 
is remembered that Massachusetts was a corporation 
which had escaped from the realm to avoid judicial 
process, and which refused to appear and plead ; hence 
Lord Clarendon had but this alternative : he could 
send judges to sit upon the spot, or he could proceed 
against the charter in London. The course he chose 
may have been illegal, but it was the milder of the two. 

The commissioners landed on July 23, 1664, but 
they did not stay in Boston. Their first business was 
to subdue the Dutch at New York, and they soon left 
to make the attack. The General Court now re- 
curred, for the first time, to the dispatch which their 
agents had brought home, and proceeded to amend 
the law relating to the franchise. They extended 
the qualification by enacting that Englishmen who 
presented a certificate under the hands of the minis- 
ter of the town that they were orthodox' in religion 
and not vicious in life, and who paid, beside, 10s. at 
a single rate, might become freemen, as well as those 
who were church -members.^ The effect of such a 
change could hardly have been toward liberality, 
rather, probably, toward concentration of power in 
the church. However slight, there was some popular 
control over the rejection of an applicant to join a 
congregation ; but giving a certificate was an act that 
must have depended on the pastor's will alone. 

The court then drew up an address to the king : 
" If your poore subjects, . . . doe . . . prostrate 
* Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 117. 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 361 

tbemselues at your royal feet 3, & ^Q^g yo'' favor, wee 
hope it will be graciously accepted by your majestje, 
and that as the high place you sustejne on earth 
doeth number you here among the gods, [priests can 
cringe as well as torture] so you will jmitate the 
God of heaven, in being ready ... to receive their 
crjes. . . ." ^ And he was implored to reflect on the 
affliction of heart it was to them, that their sins had 
provoked God to permit their adversaries to procure 
a commission, under the great seal, to four persons to 
hear appeals. When this address reached London it 
caused surprise. The chancellor was annoyed. He 
wrote to America, pointing out that His Majesty would 
hardly think himself well used at complaints before 
a beginning had been made, and a demand that his 
commission should be revoked before his commission- 
ers had been able to deliver their instructions. " I 
know," he said, " they are expressly inhibited from 
intermedling with, or instructing the administration 
of justice, according to the formes observed there ; but 
if in truth, in any extraordinary case, the proceedings 
there have been irregular, and against the rules of 
justice, as some particular cases, particularly recom- 
mended to them by His Majesty, seeme to be, it can- 
not be presumed that His Majesty hath or will leave 
his subjects of New England, without hope of re- 
dresse by an appeale to him, which his subjects of all 
his other kingdomes have free liberty to make." ^ 
The campaign against New York was short and 
1 Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 129. ^ Hutch. Hist. i. 465. 



362 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

successful, and the commissioners were soon at lei- 
sure. As they had reason to believe that Massachu- 
setts would prove stubborn, they judged it wiser to 
begin with the more tractable colonies first. They 
therefore went to Plymouth,' and, on their arrival, ac- 
cording to their instructions, submitted the four fol- 
lowing propositions : — 

First. That all householders should take the oath 
of allegiance, and that justice should be administered 
in the king's name. 

Second. That all men of competent estates and civil 
conversation, though of different judgments, might be 
admitted to be freemen, and have liberty to choose 
and be chosen officers, both civil and militai-y. 

Third. That all men and women of orthodox opin- 
ions, competent knowledge, and civil lives not scan- 
dalous, should be admitted to the Lord's Supper [and 
have baptism for their children, either in existing 
churches or their own]. 

Fourth. That all laws . . . derogatory to his maj- 
esty should be repealed.^ 

Substantially the same proposals were made sub- 
sequently in Rhode Island and Connecticut. They 
were accepted without a murmur. A few appeal 
cases were heard, and the work was done. 

The commissioners reported their entire satisfaction 
to the government, the colonies sent loyal addresses, 
and Charles returned affectionate answers. 

Massachusetts alone remained to be dealt with, but 

1 Feb. 1G64-5. 2 Palfrey, ii. GOl. 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 363 

her temper was in striking contrast to that of the rest 
of New England. The reason is obvious. Nowhere 
else was there a fusion of church and state. The 
people had, therefore, no oppressive statutes to up- 
hold, nor anything to conceal. Provided the liberty 
of English subjects was secured to them they were 
content to obey the English Constitution. On the 
other hand, Massachusetts was a theocracy, the power 
of whose priesthood rested on enactments contrary to 
British institutions, and which, therefore, would have 
been annulled upon appeal. Hence the clerical party 
were wild with fear and rage, and nerved themselves 
to desperate resistance. 

" But alasse, sir, the commission impowering those 
commisioners to heare and determine all cases what- 
ever, . . . should it take place, what would become 
of our civill government which hath binn, under God, 
the heade of that libertie for our consciences for which 
the first adventurers . . . bore all . . . discourage- 
ments that encountered them ... in this wildernes." 
Rather than submit, they protested they had " sooner 
leave our place and all our pleasant outward injoy- 
ments." ^ 

Under such conditions a direct issue was soon 
reached. The General Court, in answer to the com- 
missioners' proposals, maintained that the observance 
of their charter was inconsistent with appeals ; that 
they had already provided an oath of allegiance ; that 
they had conformed to his majesty's requirements in 
1 Court to Boyle. Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. ii. 113. 



364 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

regard to the franchise ; and lastly, in relation to tol- 
eration, there was no equivocation. " Concerning the 
vse of the Comon Prayer Booke "... we had not 
become " voluntary exiles from our deare native coun- 
try, . . . could wee haue scene the word of God, 
warranting us to performe our devotions in that way, 
& to haue the same set vp here ; wee conceive it is 
apparent that it will disturbe our peace in our present 
enjoyments." ^ 

Argument was useless. The so-called oath of alle- 
giance was not that required by Parliament ; the al- 
teration in the franchise was a sham ; while the two 
most important points, appeals to England and tolera- 
tion in religion, were rejected. The commissioners, 
therefore, asked for a direct answer to this question : 
" Whither doe yow acknowledge his majestjes comis- 
sion ... to be of full force ? " ^ They were met by 
evasion. On the 23d of May they gave notice that 
they should sit the next morning to hear the case of 
Thos. Deane et al. vs. The Gov. & Co. of Mass. Bay, 
a revenue appeal. Forthwith the General Court pro- 
claimed by trumpet that the hearing would not be 
permitted. 

Coercion was impossible, as no troops were at 
hand. The commissioners accordingly withdrew and 
went to Maine, which they proceeded to sever from 
Massachusetts.^ In this they followed the king's in- 
structions, who himself acted upon the advice of the 

1 1665. Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 200. 

a Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 204. « June, 1665. 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 365 

law officers of the crown, who had given an opinion 
sustaining the claim of Gorges.^ 

The triumph was complete. All that the English 
government was then able to do was to recall the 
commissioners, direct that agents should be sent to 
London at once, and forbid interference with Maine. 
No notice was taken of the order to send agents ; and 
in 1668 possession was again taken of the province, 
and the courts of the company once more sat in the 
county of York.^ 

This was the culmination of the Puritan Common- 
wealth. The clergy were exultant, and the Rev. Mr. 
Davenport of New Haven wrote in delight to Lev- 
erett : — 

" Their claiming power to sit authoritatively as a 
court for appeales, and that to be managed in an ar- 
bitrary way, was a manifest laying of a groundworke 
to undermine your whole government established by 
your charter. If you had consented thereunto, you 
had plucked downe with your owne hands that house 
which wisdom had built for you and your posterity. 
... As for the solemnity of publishing it, in three 
places, by sounding a trumpet, I believe you did it 
upon good advice, . . . for declaring the courage and 
resolution of the whole countrey to defend their char- 
ter liberties and priviledges, and not to yeeld up 
theire right voluntarily, so long as they can hold it, 

^ Charles II.'s letter to Inhabitants of Maine. Hutch. Coll., 
Prince Soc. ed. ii. 110 ; Palf. ii. 622. 

* July, 1668. Report of Com. Mass. Rec. vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 401. 



366 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

in dependence upon God in Christ, whose interest is 
in it, for his protection and blessing, who will be with 
you while you are with him." ^ 

Although the colonists were alarmed at their own 
success, there was nothing to fear. At no time before 
or since could England have been so safely defied. 
In 1664 war was begun against Holland ; 1665 was 
the year of the plague ; 1666 of the fire. In June, 
1667, the Dutch, having dispersed the British fleets, 
sailed up the Medway, and their guns were heard in 
London. Peace became necessary, and in August 
Clarendon was dismissed from office. The discord 
between the crown and Parliament paralyzed the na- 
tion, and the wastefulness of Charles kept him always 
poor. By the treaty of Dover in 1670 he became a 
pensioner of Louis XIV. The Cabal followed, prob- 
ably the worst ministry England ever saw ; and in 
1672, at Clifford's suggestion, the exchequer was 
closed and the debt repudia.ted to provide funds for 
the second Dutch war. In March fighting began, and 
the tremendous battles with De Ruyter kept the navy 
in the Channel. At length, in 1673, the Cabal fell, 
and Danby became prime minister. 

Although during these years of disaster and dis- 
grace Massachusetts was not molested by Great Britain, 
they were not all years during which the theocracy 
could tranquilly enjoy its victory. 

So early as 1671 the movements of the Indians 
began to give anxiety; and in 1675 Philip's War 

^ Davenport to Leverett. Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. ii. 119, 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 367 

broke out, which brought the colony to the brink of 
ruin, and in which the clergy saw the judgment of 
God against the Commonwealth, for tenderness toward 
the Quakers.^ 

With the rise of Danby a more regular administra- 
tion opened, and, as usual, the attention of the gov- 
ernment was fixed upon Massachusetts by the clamors 
of those who demanded redress for injuries alleged to 
have been received at her hands. In 1674 the heirs 
of Mason and Gorges, in despair at the reoccupation 
of Maine, proposed to surrender their claim to the 
king, reserving one third of the product of the cus- 
toms for themselves. The Loudon merchants also 
had become restive under the systematic violation of 
the Navigation Acts. The breach in the revenue 
laws had, indeed, been long a subject of complaint, 
and the commissioners had received instructions relat- 
ing thereto ; but it was not till this year that these 
questions became serious. 

The first statute had been passed by the Long Par- 
liament, but the one that most concerned the colo- 
nies was not enacted till 1663. The object was not 
only to protect English shipping, but to give her the 
entire trade of her dependencies. To that end it was 
made illegal to import European produce into any 
plantation except through England ; and, conversely, 
colonial goods could only be exported by being landed 
in England. 

The theory upon which this legislation was based is 
1 Reforming Synod, Magnolia, bk. 5, pt. 4. 



368 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

exploded ; enforced, it would have crippled commerce ; 
but it was then, and always had been, a dead letter at 
Boston. New England was fast getting its share of 
the carrying trade. London merchants already began 
to feel the competition of its cheap and untaxed ships, 
and manufacturers to complain that they were under- 
sold in the American market, by goods brought direct 
fiom the Continental ports. A petition, therefore, 
was presented to the king, to carry the law into effect. 
No colonial office then existed ; the affairs of the de- 
pendencies were assigned to a committee of the Privy 
Council, called the Lords of Committee of Trade and 
Plantations ; and on these questions being referred 
by them to the proper officers, the commissioners of 
customs sustained the merchants ; the attorney-gen- 
eral, the heirs of Mason and Gorges.^ The famous 
Edward Randolph now appears. The government 
was still too deeply embarrassed to act with energy. 
A temporizing policy was therefore adopted ; and as 
the experiment of a commission had failed, Randolph 
was chosen as a messenger to carry the petitions and 
opinions to Massachusetts ; together with a letter from 
the king, directing that agents should be sent in an- 
swer thereto. After delivering them, he was ordered 
to devote himself to preparing a report upon the 
country. He reached Boston June 10, 1676. Al- 
though it was a time of terrible suffering from the 
ravages of the Indian war, the temper of the magis- 
trates was harsher than ever. 

1 Palfrey, iii. 281 ; Chalmers's Political Annals of the United 
Colonies, p. 262. 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 369 

The repulse of the commissioners had convinced 
them that Charles was not only lazy and ignorant, but 
too poor to use force; and they also believed him 
to be so embroiled with Parliament as to make his 
overthrow probable. Filled with such feelings, their 
reception of Randolph was almost brutal. Jolin Lev- 
erett was governor, who seems to have taken pains 
to mark his contempt in every way in his power. 
Randolph was an able, but an unscrupulous man, and 
probably it would not have been difficult to have se- 
cured his good-will. Far however from bribing, or 
even flattering him, they so treated him as to make 
him the bitterest enemy the Puritan Commonwealth 
ever knew. 

Being admitted into the council chamber, he deliv- 
ered the letter.^ The governor opened it, glanced at 
the signature, and, pretending never to have heard of 
Henry Coventry, asked who he might be. He was 
told he was his majesty's principal secretary of state. 
He then read it aloud to the magistrates. Even the 
fierce Endicott, when he received the famous " mis- 
sive " from the Quaker Shattock, "laid off his hat . . . 
[when] he look'd upon the papers," ^ as a mark of 
respect to his king ; but Leverett and his council re- 
mained covered. Then the governor said " that the 
matters therein contained were very inconsiderable 
things and easily answered, and it did no way concern 
that government to take any notice thereof ; " and so 

^ Randolph's Narrative. Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. ii. 240. 

2 Sewel, p. 282. 



370 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

Randolph was dismissed. Five days after be was 
again sent for, and asked whether he " intended for 
London by that ship that was ready to saile?" If so, 
he coukl have a duplicate of the answer to the king, 
as the original was to go by other hands. He replied 
that he had other business in charge, and inquired 
whether they had well considered the petitions, and 
fixed upon their agents so soon. Leverett did not 
deign to answer, but told him " he looked upon me 
as Mr. Mason's agent, and that I might withdraw." 
The next day he saw the governor at his own house, 
who took occasion, when Randolph referred to the 
Navigation Acts, to expound the legal views of the 
theocracy. " He freely declared to me that the 
lawes made by your majestic and your Parliament 
obligeth them in nothing but what consists with the 
interest of that colony, that the legislative power is 
and abides in them solely . . . and that all matters in 
difference are to be concluded by their finall deter- 
mination, without any appeal to your majestic, and 
that your majestic ought not to retrench their liber- 
ties, but may enlarge them." ^ One last interview took 
place when Randolph went for dispatches for Eng- 
land, after his return from New Hampshire ; then he 
" was entertained by " Leverett " with a sharp reproof 
for publishing the substance of my errand into those 
parts, contained in your majestie's letters, . . . tell- 
ing me that I designed to make a mutiny. ... I 
told him, if I had done anything amisse, upon com. 
1 Randolph's Narrative. Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. ii. 243. 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 371 

plaint made to your majestie he would certainly have 
justice done him." . . . 

"At my departure . . . he . . . intreated me to 
give a favourable report of the country and the mag- 
istrates thereof, adding that those that blessed them 
God would blesse, and those that cursed them God 
would curse." And that " they were a people truely 
fearing the Lord and very obedient to your majes- 
tie." ^ And so the royal messenger was dismissed in 
wrath, to tell his story to the king. 

The legislature met in August, 1676, and a decision 
had to be made concerning agents. On the whole, 
the clergy concluded it would be wiser to obey the 
crown, " provided they be, with vtmost care & cau- 
tion, qualified as to their instructions." ^ Accord- 
ingly, after a short adjournment, the General Court 
chose William Stoughton and Peter Bulkely ; and 
having strictly limited their power to a settlement of 
the territorial controversy, they sent them on their 



mission 



Almost invariably public affairs were seen by the 
envoys of the Company in a different light from that 
in which they were viewed by the clerical party at 
home, and these particularly had not been long in 
London before they became profoundly alarmed. 
There was, indeed, reason for grave apprehension. 
The selfish and cruel policy of the theocracy had 
borne its natural fruit : without an ally in the world, 

1 Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. ii. 248. 

2 Mass. Rec. v. 99. ^ Mass. Rec. v. 114. 



372 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

Massachusetts was beset by enemies. Quakers, Bap- 
tists, and Episcopalians whom she had persecuted and 
exiled ; the heirs of Mason and Gorges, whom she 
had wronged ; Andros, whom she had maligned ; ^ and 
Randolph, whom she had insulted, wrought against 
her with a government whose sovereign she had of- 
fended and whose laws she had defied. Even her 
English friends had been much alienated.^ 

The controversy concerning the boundary was re- 
ferred to the two chief justices, who promptly decided 
against the Company ; ^ and the easy acquiescence of 
the General Court must raise a doubt as to their 
faith in the soundness of their claims. And now 
again the fatality which seemed to pursue the the- 
ocracy in all its dealings with England led it to give 
fresh provocation to the king by secretly buying the 
title of Gorges for twelve hundred and fifty pounds.^ 

Charles had intended to settle Maine on the Duke 
of Monmouth. It was a worthless possession, whose 
revenue never paid for its defence ; yet so stubborn 
was the colony that it made haste to anticipate the 
crown and thus become " Lord Proprietary " of a 
burdensome province at the cost of a slight which 
was never forgiven. Almost immediately the Privy 

* He had been accused of countenancing aid to Philip when 
governor of New York. O'Callaghan Documents, iii. 258. 

2 Palfrey, iii. 278, 279. 

^ See Opinion ; Chalmers's Annals, p. 504. 

4 May, 1677. Chalmers's Annals, pp. 396, 397. See notes, 
Palfrey, iii. 312. 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 373 

Council had begun to open other matters, such as 
coining and illicit trade ; and the attorney-general 
drew up a list of statutes which, in his opinion, were 
contrary to the laws of England. The agents protested 
that they were limited by their instructions, but were 
sharply told that his majesty did not think of treating 
with his own subjects as with foreigners, and it would 
be well to intimate the same to their principals.^ In 
December, 1677, Stoughton wrote in great alarm that 
something must be done concerning the Navigation 
Acts or a breach would be inevitable.^ And the Gen- 
eral Court saw reason in this emergency to increase 
the tension by reviving the obnoxious oath of fidelity 
to the country,^ — the substitute for the oath of alle- 
giance, — and thus gave Randolph a new and potent 
weapon. In the spring'* the law officers gave an 
opinion that the misdemeanors alleged against Massa- 
chusetts were sufficient to avoid her patent ; and the 
Privy Council, in view of the encroachments and in- 
juries which she had continually practised on her 
neighbors, and her contempt of his majesty's com- 
mands, advised that a quo warranto shoidd be brought 
against the charter. Randolph was appointed col- 
lector at Boston.^ 

Even Leverett now saw that some concessions must 
be made, and the General Court ordered the oath of 

1 Palfrey, iii. 309. - Hutch. Hist. i. 288. 

« Maifs. Rec. v. 154. 

< Palfrey, iii. 316, 317 ; Chalmers's Annals, p. 439. 
6 1678, May 31. 



374 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

allegiance to be takeu ; nothing but perversity seems 
to have caused the long delay.' The royal arms were 
also carved in the court-house ; and this was all, for 
the clergy were determined upon those matters touch- 
ing their authority. The agents were told, "that 
which is f arr more considerable then all these is the 
interest of the Lord Jesus & of his churches . . . 
w<=^ ought to be f arr dearer to us than our Hues ; and 
. . . wee would not that by any concessions of ours, 
or of yo'^s . . . the least stone should be put out of 
the wall." 2 

Both agents and magistrates were, nevertheless, 
thoroughly frightened, and being determined not to 
yield, in fact, they resorted to a policy of misrepre- 
sentation, with the hope of deceiving the English 
government.^ Stoughton and Bulkely had already 
assured the Lords of Committee that the " rest of 
the inhabitants were very inconsiderable as to num- 
ber, compared with those that were acknowledged 
church-members." * They were in fact probably as 
five to one. The General Court had been censured 
for using the word Commonwealth in official docu- 
ments, as intimating independence. They hastened to 
assure the crown that it had not of late been used, 
and should not be thereafter;^ yet in November, 1675, 

1 Oct. 2, 1678. Mass. Rec. v. 193. See Palfrey, iii. 320, 
note 2. 2 j^ass. Rec. v. 202. 

* See Answers of Agents, Chalmers's Annals, p. 450. 

* Palfrey, iii. 318. 

^ Mass. Rec. v. 198. And see, in general, the official corre- 
spondence, pp. 197-203. 



I 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 375 

commissions were thus issued.^ But the breaking out 
of the Popish plot began to absorb the whole atten- 
tion of the government at London ; and the agents, 
after receiving a last rebuke for the presumption of 
the colony in buying Maine, were at length allowed 
to depart.^ 

Nearly half a century had elapsed since the emi- 
gration, and with the growth of wealth and popula- 
tion changes had come. In March, John Leverett, 
who had long been the head of the high-church party, 
died, and the election of Simon Bradstreet as his suc- 
cessor was a triumph for the opposition. Great as 
the clerical influence still was, it had lost much of its 
old despotic power, and the congregations were no 
longer united in support of the policy of their pastors. 
This policy was singularly desperate. Casting aside 
all but ecclesiastical considerations, the clergy consist- 
ently rejected any compromise with the crown which 
threatened to touch the church. Almost from the 
first they had recognized that substantial independ- 
ence was necessary in order to maintain the theoc- 
racy. Had the colony been strong, they would doubt- 
less have renounced their allegiance ; but its weakness 
was such that, without the protection of England, it 
would have been seized by France. Hence they re- 
sorted to expedients which could only end in disaster, 
for it was impossible for Massachusetts, while part of 
the British Empire, to refuse obedience at her pleas- 
ure to laws which other colonies cheerfully obeyed. 
1 Palfrey, Ui. 322. * Nov. 1679. 



376 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

Without an ally, no resistance could be made to Eng- 
land, when at length her sovereignty should be as- 
serted ; and an armed occupation and military govern- 
ment were inevitable upon a breach. 

Though such considerations are little apt to induce 
a priesthood to surrender their temporal power, they 
usually control commercial communities. Accord- 
ingly, Boston and the larger towns favored conces- 
sion, while the country was the ministers' stronghold. 
The result of this divergence of opinion was that the 
moderate party, to which Bradstreet and Dudley be- 
longed, predominated in the Board of Assistants, while 
the deputies remained immovable. The branches of 
the legislature thus became opposed ; no course of ac- 
tion could be agreed on, and the theocracy drifted to 
its destruction. 

The duplicity characteristic of theological politics 
grew daily more marked. In May, 1679, a law had 
been passed forbidding the building of churches with- 
out leave from the freemen of the town or the Gen- 
eral Court.^ On the 11th of June, 1680, three per- 
sons representing the society of Baptists were sum- 
moned before the legislature, charged with the crime 
of erecting a meeting-house. They were admon- 
ished and forbidden to meet for worship except with 
the established congregations ; and their church was 
closed.^ That very day an address was voted to the 
king, one passage of which is as follows : " Concern- 

1 Mass. Rec. v. 213. 
« Mass. Rec. v. 271. 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 377 

ing liberty of conscience, . . . that after all, a mul- 
titude of notorious errors ... be openly broached, 
. . . amongst us, as by the Quakers, &c., wee pre- 
sume his majesty doeth not intend ; and as for other 
Prottestant dissenters, that carry it peaceably & so- 
berly, wee trust there shallbe no cause of just com- 
plaint against us on their behalfe." ^ 

Meanwhile Randolph had renewed his attack. He 
declared that in spite of promises and excuses the 
revenue laws were not enforced ; that his men were 
beaten, and that he hourly expected to be thrown into 
prison ; whereas in other colonies, he asserted, he was 
treated with great respect.^ There can be no doubt 
ingenuity was used to devise means of annoyance, and 
certainly the life he was made to lead was hard. In 
March ^ he sailed for home, and while in London he 
made a series of reports to the government which 
seem to have produced the conviction that the mo- 
ment for action had come. In December he returned, 
commissioned as deputy - surveyor and auditor -gen- 
eral for all New England, except New Hampshire. 
When Stoughton and Bulkely were dismissed, the 
colony had been commanded to send new agents with- 
in six months. In September, 1680, another royal 
letter had been written, in which the king dwelt upon 
the misconduct of his subjects, " when ... we sig- 
nified unto you our gracious inclination to have all 
past deeds forgotten . . . wee then little thought that 

1 Mass. Rec. v. 287. 

2 June, 1680. Palfrey, iii. 340. « March 15, 1680-1. 



378 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

those markes of our grace and favour should have 
found no better acceptance amoung you. . . . We 
doe therefore by these our letters, strictly command 
and require you, as you tender your allegiance unto 
us, and will deserve the effects of our grace and favour 
(which wee are enclyned to afford you) seriously to 
reflect upon our commands ; . . . and particularly wee 
doe hereby command you to send over, within three 
months after the receipt hereof, such . . . persons 
as you shall think fitt to choose, and that you give 
them sufficient instructions to attend the regulation 
and settlement of that our government." ^ 

The General Court had not thought fit to regard 
these communications, and now Randolph came charged 
with a long and stern dispatch, in which agents were 
demanded forthwith, " in default whereof, we are 
fully resolved, in Trinity Term next ensuing, to direct 
our attorney-general to bring a quo warranto in our 
court of kings-bench, whereby our charter granted 
unto you, with all the powers thereof, may be legally 
evicted and made void ; and so we bid you fare- 
wel."2 

Hitherto the clerical party had procrastinated, 
buoyed up by the hope that in the fierce struggle with 
the commons Charles might be overthrown ; but this 
dream ended with the dissolution of the Oxford Par, 
liament, and further inaction became impossible. Jo. 
seph Dudley and John Richards were chosen agents, 

1 Sept. 30. Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. ii. 261. 
^ Chalmers's Annals, p. 449. 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 379 

and provided with instructions bearing the peculiar 
tinge of ecclesiastical statesmanship. 

They were directed to represent that appeals would 
be intolerable ; and, for their private guidance, the 
legislature used these words : " We therefore doe not 
vnderstand by the regulation of the gouernment, that 
any alteration of the patent is intended ; yow shall 
therefore neither doe nor consent to any thing that 
may violate or infringe the libertjes & priuiledges 
granted to us by his maj*^®^ royall charter, or the gou- 
ernment established thereby ; but if any thing be pro- 
pounded that may tend therevnto, yow shall say, yow 
haue received no instruction in that matter." ^ With 
reference to the complaints made against the colony, 
they were to inform the king " that wee haue no law 
prohibbiting any such as are of the perswasion of the 
church of England, nor haue any euer desired to wor- 
ship God accordingly that haue been denyed." ^ 

Such a statement cannot be reconciled with the 
answer made the commissioners; and the laws com- 
pelled Episcopalians to attend the Congregational 
worship, and denied them the right to build churches 
of their own. 

" As for the Annabaptlsts, they are now subject to 
no other poenal statutes then those of the Congrega- 
tional way." This sophistry is typical. The law 
under which the Baptist church was closed applied 
in terms to all inhabitants, it is true ; but it was con- 
trived to suppress schism, it was used to coerce here- 
» Mass. Rec. v. 349. « Mass. Rec. v. 347. March 23. 



380 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

tics, and it was unrepealed. Moreover, it would seem 
as though the statute inflicting banishment must then 
have still been in force. 

The assurances given in regard to the reform of 
the suffrage were precisely parallel : — 

" For admission of ffreemen, wee humbly conceive 
it is our liberty, by charter, to chuse whom wee will 
admitt into our oune company, w*'^ yet hath not binn 
restrayned to Congregational men, but others haue 
been admitted, who were also provided for according 
to his maj*^*^® direction." ^ 

Such insincerity gave weight to Randolph's words 
when he wrote : " My lord, I have but one thing to 
reminde your lordship, that nothing their agents can 
say or doe in England can be any ground for his maj- 
estic to depend upon." ^ 

With these documents and one thousand pounds 
for bribery, soon after increased to three,^ Dudley and 
Richards sailed. Their powers were at once rejected 
at London as insufficient, and the decisive moment 
came.* The churchmen of Massachusetts had to de- 
termine whether to accept the secularization of their 
government or abandon every guaranty of popular 
liberty. The clergy did not hesitate before the mo- 
mentous alternative : they exerted themselves to the 
utmost, and turned the scale for the last time.^ In 

1 1681-2, March 23. 

2 Randolph to Clarendon. Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. ii. 277 

3 Chalmers's Annals, p. 461. 

* Idein, p. 413. ^ Hutch. Hist. i. 303, note. 



I 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 381 

fresh instructions the agents were urged to do what 
was possible to avert, or at least delay, the stroke ; 
but they were forbidden to consent to appeals, or to 
alterations in the qualifications required for the ad- 
mission of freemen.^ They had previously been di- 
rected to pacify the king by a present of two thousand 
pounds; and this ill-judged attempt at bribery had 
covered them with ridicule.^ 

Further negotiation would have been futile. Pro- 
ceedings were begun at once, and Randolph was sent 
to Boston to serve the writ of quo warranto ; ^ he was 
also charged with a royal declaration promising that, 
even then, were submission made, the charter should 
be restored with only such changes as the public wel- 
fare demanded.^ Dudley, who was a man of much 
political sagacity, had returned and strongly urged 
moderation. The magistrates were not without the 
instincts of statesmanship : they saw that a breach 
with England must destroy all safeguards of the 
common freedom, and they voted an address to the 
crown accepting the proffered terms.^ But the clergy 
strove against them : the privileges of their order 
were at stake ; they felt that the loss of their impor- 
tance would be " destructive to the interest of religion 
and of Christ's kingdom in the colony," ^ and they 
roused their congregations to resist. The deputies did 

1 1683, March 30. Mass. Rec. v. 390. 

2 Hutch. Hist. i. 303, note. » 1683, July 20. 
* Mass. Rec. v. 422, 423. 

6 1683, 15 Nov. Hutch. Hist. i. 304 « PaHrej, iii. 381. 



382 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

not represent the people, but the church. They were 
men who had been trained from infancy by the priests, 
who had been admitted to the communion and the 
franchise on account of their religious fervor, and who 
had been brought into public life because the eccle- 
siastics found them pliable in their hands. The in- 
fluence which had moulded their minds and guided 
their actions controlled them still, and they rejected 
the address.^ Increase Mather took the lead. He 
stood up at a great meeting in the Old South, and 
exhorted the people, "telling them how their fore- 
fathers did purchase it [the charter], and would 
they deliver it up, even as Ahab required Naboth's 
vineyard. Oh ! their children would be bound to curse 
them." 2 

All that could be resolved on was to retain Robert 
Humphrys of the Middle Temple to interpose such 
delays as the law permitted ; but no attempt was made 
at defence upon the merits of their cause, probably 
because all knew well that no such defence was 
possible. 

Meanwhile, for technical reasons, the quo warranto 
had been abandoned, and a writ of scire facias had 
been issued out of chancery. On June 18, 1684, the 
lord keeper ordered the defendant to appear and 
plead on the first day of the next Michaelmas Term. 
The time allowed was too short for an answer from 
America, and judgment was entered by default.^ The 

1 Nov. 30. Palfrey, iii. 385. ^ Palfrey, iii. 388, note 1. 

8 Decree entered June 21, 1684 ; confirmed, Oct. 23. Palfrey, 
iii. 393, note. 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 383 

decree was arbitrary, but no effort was made to obtain 
relief. The story, however, is best told by Humphrys 
himself : — 

" It is matter of astonishment to me, to think of 
the returnes I haue had from you in the affaire of yo"^ 
charter ; that a prudent people should think soe little, 
in a thing of the greatest moment to them. 

" Which chai'ge I humbly justify in the foll^ par- 
ticulars, and yet at the same time confess that all 
you could haue done would but haue gained more time, 
and spent more money, since the breaches assigned 
ag* you, were as obvious as vnanswerable, soe as all 
the service yo' councill and friends could haue done 
you here, would haue onely served to deplore, not pre- 
vent the inevitable loss. 

" When I sent you the lord keeper's order of the 
18th of June 1684 requireing yo' appeareing peromp- 
torily the first day of Michas Tearme then next, and 
pleading to yssue . . . you may remember I sent with 
it such drafts of Ires of attorney, to pass vnder your 
comon scale as were essentially necessary to empower 
and justify such appearance, and pleading for you 
here, which you could not imagine but that you must 
haue had due time to returne them in, noe law com- 
pelling impossibilities. 

" When the first day of that Michas Tearme came, 
and yo' Ires of attorney neither were, nor indeed could 
be return'd ... 1 applyd by councill to the Court of 
Chancery to enlarge that time urgeing the impossibil- 
ity of hauing a returne from you in the time allotted. 



384 THE SCIRE FACIAS. 

. . . But it is true my lord keeper cutt the ground 
from under us which wee stood upon, by telling us the 
order of the 18th of June was a surprize upon his 
lo^ and that he ought not to haue granted it, for 
that every corporacon ought to haue an attorney in 
every court to appeare to his ma'* suite, and that 
London had such, . . . However certainely you ought 
when my ires were come to you, nunc pro tunc, to 
haue past the Ires of attorney I sent you under your 
comon scale and sent them me, and not to haue stopt 
them upon any private surmises from other hands 
then his you had entrusted in that matter ; and the 
rather for that the judgm** of law, espetially those 
taken by defaults for non appearances, are not like 
the laws of the Medes and Persians irrevocable, but 
are often on just grounds sett aside by the court 
here, and the defendants admitted to plead as if noe 
such judgm*® had been entred vp, and the very order 
it selfe of the 18th of June guies you a home instance 
of it. 

" And indeed I did therefore forbeare giueing you 
an acco* of a further time being denyd, and the entry 
of judgm* ag* you, expecting you would before such 
ire could haue reacht you haue sent me the tres of 
attorney vnder your corporacon seale that the court 
might haue been moved to ad mitt yo*" appearance 
and plea and waiued the judgm*. 

" But instead of those Ires of attorney under your 
seale you sent me an address to his late ma*^, I con- 
fess judiciously drawne. But it is my wonder in which 



THE SCIRE FACIAS. 385 

of yo' capacityes you could imagine it should be pre- 
sented to his ma*y, for if as a corporacon, a body poli- 
tique, it should have been putt under your corporacon 
scale if as a private comunity it should haue been 
signed by your order. But the paper has neither 
private hand nor publique scale to it and soe must 
be lost. . . . 

" In this condicon what could a man doe for you, 
nothing publiquely for he had noe warrant from you 
to justify the accon." ^ 

So perished the Puritan Commonwealth. The 
child of the Reformation, its life sprang from the 
assertion of the freedom of the mind ; but this great 
and noble principle is fatal to the temporal power of 
a priesthood, and during the supremacy of the clergy 
the government was doomed to be both persecuting 
and repressive. Under no circumstance could the 
theocracy have endured : it must have fallen by revolt 
from within if not by attack from without. That 
Charles II. did in fact cause its overthrow gives him 
a claim to our common gratitude, for he then struck a 
decisive blow for the emancipation of Massachusetts ; 
and thus his successor was enabled to open before her 
that splendid career of democratic constitutional lib- 
erty which was destined to become the basis of the 
jurisprudence of the American Union. 

^ Mass. Archives, cvi. 343. 



1 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE WITCHCRAFT. 

The history of the years between the dissolution of 
the Company of Massachusetts Bay and the reorgani- 
zation of the country by William III. in 1692 has 
little bearing upon the development of the people ; 
for the presidency of Dudley and the administration 
of Andros were followed by a revolution that paralyzed 
all movement. During the latter portion of this in- 
terval the colony was represented at London by three 
agents, of whom Increase Mather was the most influ- 
ential, who used every effort to obtain the reestab- 
lishment of the old government ; they met, however, 
with insupera,ble obstacles. Quietly to resume was 
impossible ; for the obstinacy of the clergy, in refus- 
ing all compromise with Charles II., had caused the 
patent to be cancelled ; and thus a new grant had be- 
come necessary. Nor was this all, for the attorney 
and solicitor general, with whom the two chief justices 
concurred,^ gave it as their opinion that, supposing no 
decree had been rendered, and the same powers were 
exercised as before, a writ of scire facias would cer- 
tainly be issued, upon which a similar judgment would 
inevitably be entered. These considerations, however, 
1 Parentator, p. 139. 



THE WITCHCRAFT. 387 

became immaterial, as the king was a statesman, and 
had already decided upon his policy. His views had 
little in common with those held by the Massachusetts 
ecclesiastics, and when the Rev. Mr. Mather first read 
the instrument in which they had been embodied, he 
declared he " would sooner part with his life than con- 
sent unto such minutes." ^ He grew calmer, however, 
when told that his "consent was not expected nor de- 
sired ; " and with that energy and decision for which 
he was remarkable, at once secured the patronage. 

The constitutional aspect of the Provincial Charter 
is profoundly interesting, and it will be considered in 
its legal bearings hereafter. Its political tendencies, 
however, first demand attention, for it wrought a com- 
plete social revolution, since it overthrew the temporal 
power of the church. Massachusetts, Maine, and 
Plymouth were consolidated, and within them toler- 
ation was established, except in regard to Papists ; v 
the religious qualification was swept away, and in 
its stead freeholders of forty shillings per annum, or * 
owners of personal property to the value of forty 
pounds sterling, were admitted to the franchise ; the 
towns continued to elect the house of representatives, 
and the whole Assembly chose the council, subject to 
the approval of the executive.^ The governor, lieuten- 
ant-governor, and secretary were appointed by the 
crown ; the governor had a veto, and the king re- 
served the right to disallow legislation within three / 
years of the date of its enactment. Thus the theoc- 
1 Parentator, p. 134. 2 Hutch. Hist. ii. 15, 16c 



388 THE WITCHCRAFT. 

racy fell at a single blow ; and it is worthy of remark 
that thenceforward prosecutions for sedition became 
unknown among the people of the Province of Massa- 
chusetts Bay. Yet, though the clerical oligarchy was 
no longer absolute, the ministers still exerted a pro- 
digious influence upon opinion. Not only did they 
speak with all the authority inherited with the tradi- 
tions of the past ; not only had they or their prede- 
cessors trained the vast majority of the people from 
their cradles to reverence them more than anything 
on earth, but their compact organization was as yet 
unimpaired, and at its head stood the two Mathers, 
the pastors of the Old North Church. Thus vener- 
ated and thus led, the elders were still able to appeal 
to the popular superstition and fanaticism with terrible 
effect. 

Widely differing judgments have been formed of 
these two celebrated divines ; the ecclesiastical view is 
perhaps well summed up by the Rev. John Eliot, who 
thus describes the President of Harvard : " He was 
the father of the New England clergy, and his name 
and character were held in veneration, not only by 
those, who knew him, but by succeeding generations." ^ 
All must admit his ability and learning, while in sanc- 
timoniousness of deportment he was unrivalled. His 
son Cotton says he had such a " gravity as made all 
sorts of persons, wherever he came, to be struck with 
a sensible awe of his presence, . . . yea, if he laughed 
on them, they believed it not." " His very counte^ 

1 Biographical Dictionary, p. 312. 



THE WITCHCRAFT. 389 

nance carried the force of a sermon with it." ^ He 
kept a strict account of his mental condition, and al- 
ways was pleased when able to enter in his diary at 
the end of the day, "heart serious." He was unctuous 
in his preaching, and wept much in the pulpit ; he 
often mentions being " quickened at the Lord's table 
[during which] tears gushed from me before the 
Lord," 2 but of his self-sacrifice, his mercy, and his 
truth, his own acts and words are the best evidence 
that remain. 

When the new government was about to be put in 
operation, an extraordinary amount of patronage lay 
at the disposal of the crown ; for, beside the regular 
executive officers, the entire council had to be named, 
since they could not be elected until a legislature had 
been organized to choose them. Increase Mather, 
Elisha Cooke, and Thomas Oakes were acting as 
agents, and all had been bitterly opposed to the new 
charter ; but of the three, the English ministers 
thought Mather the most important to secure. And 
now an odd coincidence happened in the life of this 
singular man. He suddenly one day announced him- 
self convinced that the king's project was not so in- 
tolerable as to be unworthy of support ; and then it 
very shortly transpired that he had been given all the 
spoil before the patent had passed the seals.^ The 
proximity of these events is interesting as bearing on 
the methods of ecclesiastical statesmen, and it is also 

1 Parentator, p. 40. ^ Parentaior, p. 48. 

8 Palfrey, iv. 85. 



390 THE WITCHCRAFT. 

instructive to observe how thorough a master of the 
situation this eminent divine proved himself to be. 
He not only appointed all his favorite henchmen to 
office, but he rigidly excluded his colleagues at Lon- 
don, who had continued their opposition, and every 
one else who had any disposition to be independent. 
His creature. Sir William Phips, was made governor; 
William Stoughton, who was bred for the church, 
and whose savage bigotry endeared him to the clergy, 
was lieutenant-governor; and the council was so 
packed that his excellent son broke into a shout of 
triumph when he heard the news : — 

" The time has come ! the set time has come ! I 
am now to receive an answer of so many prayers. All 
the councellors of the province are of my own father's 
nomination ; and my father-in-law, with several related 
unto me, and several brethren of my own church are 
among them. The governor of the province is not 
my enemy, but one whom I baptized ; namely. Sir 
William Phips, one of my own flock, and one of my 
dearest friends." ^ Such was the government the 
theocracy left the country as its legacy when its own 
power had passed away, and dearly did Massachu- 
setts rue that fatal gift in her paroxysms of agony 
and blood. 

At the close of the seventeenth century the belief in 
witchcraft was widespread, and among the more igno- 
rant well-nigh universal. The superstition was, more- 
over, fostered by the clergy, who, in adopting this 
1 Cotton Mather's Diary ; Quincy's History of Harvard, i. 60. 



THE WITCHCRAFT. 391 

policy, were undoubtedly actuated by mixed motives. 
Their credulity probably made them for the most part 
sincere in the unbounded confidence they professed in 
the possibility of compacts between the devil and man- 
kind ; but, nevertheless, there is abundant evidence in 
their writings of their having been keenly alive to the 
fact that men horror-stricken at the sight of the de- 
struction of their wives and children by magic would 
grovel in the submission of abject terror at the feet of 
the priest who promised to deliver them. 

The elders began the agitation by sending out a 
paper of proposals for collecting stories of appari- 
tions and witchcrafts, and in obedience to their wish 
Increase Mather published his " Illustrious Provi- 
dences " in 1683-4. Two chapters of this book were 
devoted to sorceries, and the reverend author took 
occasion to intimate his opinion that those who might 
doubt the truth of his relations were probably them- 
selves either heretics or wizards. This movement of 
the clergy seems to have highly inflamed the popular 
imagination,^ yet no immediate disaster followed ; and 
the nervous exaltation did not become deadly until 
1G88. In the autumn of that year four children of a 
Boston mason named Goodwin began to mimic the 
symptoms they had so often heard described ; the fa- 
ther, who was a pious man, called in the ministers of 
Boston and Charlestown, who fasted and prayed, and 
succeeded in delivering the youngest, who was five. 
Meanwhile, one of the daughters had " cried out 
1 Hutch. Hist. ii. 24. 



392 THE WITCHCRAFT. 

upon " an unfortunate Irish washerwoman, with whom 
she had quarrelled. Cotton Mather was now in his 
element. He took the eldest girl home with him and 
tried a great number of interesting experiments as to 
the relative power of Satan and the Lord ; among 
others he gravely relates how when the sufferer was 
tormented elsewhere he would carry her struggling 
to his own study, into which entering, she stood im- 
mediately upon her feet, and cried out, " They are 

gone ! They are gone ! They say they cannot 

God won't let 'em come here." ^ 

It is not credible that an educated and a sane man 
could ever have honestly believed in the absurd stuff 
which he produced as evidence of the supernatural ; 
his description of the impudence of the children is 
amazing. 

" They were divers times very near burning or 
drowning of themselves, but ... by their own pitti- 
ful and seasonable cries for help still procured their 
deliverance : which made me consider, whether the 
little ones had not their angels, in the plain sense of 
our Saviour's intimation. . . . And sometimes, tho' 
but seldome, they were kept from eating their meals, 
by having their teeth sett when they carried any thing 
to their mouthes." ^ 

And it was upon such evidence that the washer- 
woman was hanged. There is an instant in the bat- 
tle as the ranks are wavering, when the calmness of 

^ Memorable Providences, pp. 27, 28. 
2 Idem, pp. 15-17. 



THE WITCHCRAFT. 393 

the officers will avert the rout ; and as to have held 
their soldiers then is deemed their highest honoi*, so 
to have been found wanting is their indelible disgrace ; 
the people stood poised upon the panic's brink, their 
pastors lashed them in. 

Cotton Mather forthwith published a terrific ac- 
count of the ghostly crisis, mixed with denunciations 
of the Sadducee or Atheist who disbelieved ; and to the 
book was added a preface, written by the four other 
clergymen who had assisted with their prayers, the 
character of wliich may be judged by a single extract. 
" The following account will afford to him that shall 
read with observation, a further clear confirmation, 
that, there is both a God, and a devil, and witchcraft : 
that there is no outward affliction, but what God may, 
(and sometimes doth) permit Satan to trouble his peo- 
ple withal." ^ Not content with this, Mather goaded 
his congregation into frenzy from the pulpit. " Con- 
sider also, the misery of them whom witchcraft may be 
let loose upon. What is it to fall into the hands of 
devils? . . . O what a direful thing is it, to be prickt 
with pins, and stab'd with knives all over, and to be 
fill'd all over with broken bones ? 'T is impossible to 
reckon up the varieties of miseries which those mon- 
sters inflict where they can have a blow. No less 
than death, and that a languishing and a terrible 
death will satisfie the rage of those formidable drag- 
ons." 2 The pest was sure to spread in a credulous 

* Memorable Providences, Preface. 

* Discourse on Witchcraftf p. 19. 



394 THE WITCHCRAFT. 

community, fed by their natural leaders with this 
morbid poison, and it next broke out in Salem village 
in February, 1691-2. A number of girls had become 
intensely excited by the stories they had heard, and 
two of them, who belonged to the family of the clergy- 
man, were seized with the usual symptoms. Of Mr. 
Parris it is enough to say that he began the investi- 
gation with a frightful relish. Other ministers were 
called in, and prayer-meetings lasting all day were 
held, with the result of throwing the patients into con- 
vulsions.^ Then the name of the witch was asked, 
and the girls were importuned to make her known. 
They refused at first, but soon the pressure became 
too strong, and the accusations began. Among the 
earliest to be arrested and examined was Goodwife 
Cory. Mr. Noyes, teacher of Salem, began with 
prayer, and when she was brought in the sufferers 
"did vehemently accuse her of afflicting them, by 
biting, pinching, strangling, &c., and they said, they 
did in their fits see her likeness coming to them, and 
bringing a book for them to sign." ^ By April the 
number of informers and of the suspected had greatly 
increased and the prisons began to fill. Mr. Parris 
behaved like a madman ; not only did he preach in- 
flammatory sei'mons, but he conducted the examina- 
tions, and his questions were such that the evidence 
was in truth nothing but what he put in the mouths 
of the witnesses ; yet he seems to have been guilty of 

1 Calef's More Wonders, p. 90 et seq. 

2 Idem, p. 92. . 



THE WITCHCRAFT. 395 

a darker crime, for there is reason to suppose he gar- 
bled the testimony it was his sacred duty to truly 
record.^ And in all this he appears to have had the 
approval and the aid of Mr. Noyes. Such was the 
crisis when Sir William Phips landed on the 14th 
of May, 1692 ; he was the Mathers' tool, and the re- 
sult could have been foretold. Uneducated and cred- 
ulous, he was as clay in the hands of his creators; 
and his first executive act was to cause the mis- 
erable prisoners to be fettered. Jonathan Gary has 
described what befell his wife: "Next morning the 
jaylor put irons on her legs (having received such a 
command) the weight of them was about eight pounds ; 
these irons and her other afflictions, soon brought her 
into convulsion fits, so that I thought she would have 
died that night." ^ 

At the beginning of June the governor, by an arbi- 
trary act, created a court to try the witches, and at 
its head put William Stoughton. Even now it is im- 
possible to read the proceedings of this sanguinary 
tribunal without a shudder, and it has left a stain 
upon the judiciary of Massachusetts that can never be 
effaced. 

Two weeks later the opinion of the elders was 
asked, as it had been of old, and they recommended 
the " speedy and vigorous prosecutions of such as 
have rendered themselves obnoxious," ^ nor did their 

* Grounds of Complaint against Parris, § 6 ; More Wonders, 
p. 96 (i. e. 56). 
2 More Wonders, p. 97. * Hutch. Hist. ii. 53. 



396 THE WITCHCRAFT. 

advice fall upon unwilling ears. Stoughton was al- 
ready at work, and certain death awaited all who 
were dragged before that cruel and bloodthirsty bigot ; 
even when the jury acquitted, the court refused to re- 
ceive the verdict. The accounts given of the legal 
proceedings seem monstrous. The preliminary exam- 
inations were conducted amid such " hideous clamours 
and screechings," that frequently the voice of the de- 
fendant was drowned, and if a defence was attempted 
at a trial, the victim was browbeaten and mocked by 
the bench. ^ 

The ghastly climax was reached in the case of 
George Burroughs, who had been the clergyman at 
Wells. At his trial the evidence could hardly be 
heard by reason of the fits of the sufferers. " The 
chief judge asked the prisoner, who he thought hin- 
dered these witnesses from giving their testimonies? 
and he answered, he supposed it was the devil. That 
honourable person then replied. How comes the devil 
so loath to have any testimony born against you? 
Which cast him into very great confusion." Pres- 
ently the informers saw the ghosts of his two dead 
wives, whom they charged him with having murdered, 
stand before him " crying for vengeance ; " yet though 
much appalled, he steadily denied that they were 
there. He also roused his judges' ire by asserting 
that " there neither are, nor ever were, witches." ^ 

He and those to die with him were carried through 

1 More Wonders, p. 102. 

2 Idem. pp. 115-119. 



y 



THE WITCHCRAFT. 397 

the streets of Salem in a cart. As he climbed the 
ladder he called God to witness he was innocent, and 
his words were so pathetic that the people sobbed 
aloud, and it seemed as though he might be rescued 
even as he stood beneath the tree. Then when at last 
he swung above them. Cotton Mather rode among the 
throng and told them of his guilt, and how the fiend 
could come to them as an angel of light, and so the 
work went on. They cut him down and dragged him 
by his halter to a shallow hole among the rocks, and 
threw him in, and there they lay together with the 
rigid hand of the wizard Burroughs still pointing up- 
ward through his thin shroud of earth. ^ 

By October it seemed as though the bonds of society 
were dissolving; nineteen persons had been hanged, 
one had been pressed to death, and eight lay con- 
demned ; a number had fled, but their property had 
been seized and they were beggars ; the prisons were 
choked, while more than two hundred were accused 
and in momentary fear of arrest ; ^ even two dogs had 
been killed. The plague propagated itself; for the 
only hope for those cried out upon was to confess their 
guilt and turn informers. Thus no one was safe. 
Mr. Willard, pastor of the Old South, who began to 
falter, was threatened ; the wife of Mr. Hale, pastor 
of Beverly, who had been one of the great leaders of 
the prosecutions, was denounced; Lady Phips her- 
self was named. But the race who peopled New Eng- 

1 More Wonders, pp. 103, 104. 
a Idem, p. 110. 



398 THE WITCHCRAFT. 

land had a mental vigor which even the theocracy 
could not subdue, and Massachusetts had among her 
sons liberal and enlightened men, whose voice was 
heard, even in the madness of the terror. Of these, 
the two Brattles, Robert Calef, and John Leverett 
were the foremost ; and they served their mother well, 
though the debt of gratitude and honor which she 
owes them she has never yet repaid. 

On the 8th, four days before the meeting of the 
legislature, and probably at the first moment it could 
be done with safety, Thomas Brattle wrote an admir- 
able letter,^ in which he exposed the folly and wicked- 
ness of the delusion with all the enei'gy the temper of 
the time would bear ; had he miscalculated, his error 
of judgment would probably have cost him his life. 
At the meeting of the General Court the illegal and 
blood-stained commission came to an end, and as the 
reaction slowly and surely set in, Phips began to feel 
alarm lest he should he called to account in England ; 
accordingly, he tried to throw the blame on Stough- 
ton : " When I returned, I found people much dissat- 
isfied at the proceedings of the court; . . . The 
deputy -governor, [Stoughton] notwithstanding, per- 
sisted vigorously in the same method. . . . When I 
put an end to the court, there was at least fifty per- 
sons in prison, in great misery by reason of the ex- 
treme cold and their poverty. ... I permitted a 
special superior court to be held at Salem, ... on 
the third day of January, the lieutenant-governor being 
^ Mass. Hist. Coll. first series, v. 61. 



THE WITCHCRAFT. 399 

chief judge. . . . All . . . were cleared, saving three. 
. . . The deputy-governor signed a warrant for their 
speedy execution, and also of five others who were 
condemned at the former court. . . . But ... I sent 
a reprieve ; . . . the lieutenant-governor upon this 
occasion was enraged and filled with passionate anger, 
and refused to sit upon the bench at a superior court, 
at that time held at Charlestown ; and, indeed, hath 
from the beginning hurried on these matters with 
great precipitancy, and by his warrant hath caused 
the estates, goods, and chattels of the executed to be 
seized and disposed of without my knowledge or con- 
sent." ^ Some months earlier, also, just before the 
meeting of the legislature, he had called on Cotton 
Mather to defend him against the condemnation he 
had even then begun to feel, and the elder had re- 
sponded with a volume which remains as a memo- 
rial of him and his compeers.^ He gave thanks for 
the blood that had already flowed, and prayed to God 
for more. " They were some of the gracious words, 
inserted in the advice, which many of the neighbouring 
ministers, did this summer humbly lay before our hon- 
ourable judges : ' We cannot but with all thankful- 
ness, acknowledge the success which the merciful God 
has given unto the sedulous and assiduous endeav- 
ours of our honourable rulers, to detect the abom- 
inable witchcrafts which have been committed in the 

1 Phips to the Earl of Nottingham, Feb. 21, 1693. Palfrey, 
iv. 112, note 2. 

^ Wonders of the Invisible World. 



400 THE WITCHCRAFT. 

country ; humbly praying that the discovery of those 
mysterious and mischievous wickednesses, may be per- 
fected.' If in the midst of the many dissatisfactions 
among us, the publication of these trials, may promote 
such a pious thankfulness unto God, for justice being 
so far, executed among us, I shall rejoyce that God is 
glorified ; and pray that no wrong steps of ours may 
ever sully any of his glorious works." ^ 

" These witches . . . have met in hellish randez- 
vouszes. ... In these hellish meetings, these mon- 
sters have associated themselves to do no less a thing 
than to destroy the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
in these parts of the world. . . . We are truly come 
into a day, which by being well managed might be 
very glorious, for the exterminating of those, accursed 
things, . . . But if we make this day quarrelsome, . . . 
Alas, O Lord, my flesh trembles for fear of thee, and 
I am afraid of thy judgments." ^ 

While reading such words the streets of Salem rise 
before the eyes, with the cart dragging Martha Cory 
to the gallows while she protests her innocence, and 
there, at her journey's end, at the gibbet's foot, stands 
the Rev. Nicholas Noyes, pointing to the dangling 
corpses, and saying : " What a sad thing it is to see 
eight firebrands of hell hanging there." ^ 

The sequence of cause and effect is sufficiently ob- 
vious. Although at a moment when the panic had 

^ Wonders of the Invisible Worlds pp. 82, 83. 

2 Idem, pp. 49-60. 

8 More Wonders, p. 108. 



TEE WITCHCRAFT. 401 

got beyond control, even the most ultra of the clergy 
had been forced by their own danger to counsel mod- 
eration, the conservatives were by no means ready to 
abandon their potent allies from the lower world ; 
the power they gave was too alluring. " 'T is a strange 
passage recorded by Mr. Clark, in the life of his fa- 
ther. That the peojile of his parish refusing to be re- 
claimed from their Sabbath breaking, by all the zeal- 
ous testimonies which that good man bore against it ; 
at last [one night] . . . there was heard a great noise, 
with rattling of chains, up and down the town, and an 
horrid scent of brimstone. . . . Upon which the guilty 
consciences of the wretches, told them, the devil was 
come to fetch them away; and it so terrify'd them, 
that an eminent reformation foUow'd the germons 
which that man of God preached thereupon." ^ They 
therefore saw the constant acquittals, the abandon- 
ment of prosecutions, and the growth of incredu- 
lity with regret. The next year Cotton Mather laid 
bare the workings of their minds with cynical frank- 
ness. " The devils have with most horrendous opera- 
tions broke in upon our neighbourhood, and God has 
at such a rate overruled all the fury and malice of 
those devils, that . . . the souls of many, especially 
of the rising generation, have been thereby waken'd 
unto some acquaintance with religion ; our young peo- 
ple who belonged unto the praying meetings, of both 
sexes, apart would ordinarily spend whole nights by 
the whole weeks together in prayers and psalms upon 
^ Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 65. 



402 THE WITCHCRAFT. 

these occasions ; . . . and some scores of other young 
people, who were strangers to real piety, were now 
struck with the lively demonstrations of hell . . . be- 
fore their eyes. ... In the whole — the devil got just 
nothing, but God got praises, Christ got subjects, the 
Holy Spirit got temples, the church got addition, and 
the souls of men got everlasting benefits." ^ 

Mather prided himself on what he had done. " I 
am not so vain as to say that any wisdom or virtue of 
mine did contribute unto this good order of things ; 
but I am so just as to say, I did not hinder this 
good." 2 Men with such beliefs, and lured onward 
by such temptations, were incapable of letting the tre- 
mendous power superstition gave them slip from their 
grasp without an effort on their own behalf ; and ac- 
cordingly it was not long before the Mathers were 
once more at work. On the 10th of September, 
1693, or about nine months after the last spasms at 
Salem, and when the belief in enchantments was fast 
falling into disrepute, a girl named Margaret Rule 
was taken with the accustomed symptoms in Boston. 
Forthwith these two godly divines repaired to her 
bedside, and this is what took place : — 

Then Mr. M father and son came up, and oth- 
ers with them, in the whole were about thirty or forty 
persons, they being sat, the father on a stool, and the 
son upon the bedside by her, the son began to ques. 
tion her : 

1 More Wonders, p. 12. " Idem, p. 12. 



THE WITCHCRAFT. 403 

Margaret Rule, how do you do ? Then a pause 
without any answer. 

Question. What. Do there a gi'eat many witches 
sit upon you? Answer. Yes. 

Question. Do you not know that there is a hard 
master ? 

Then she was in a fit. He laid his hand upon 
her face and nose, but, as he said, without perceiving 
breath; then he brush'd her on the face with his 
glove, and rubb'd her stomach (her breast not being 
covered with the bed clothes) and bid others do so 
too, and said it eased her, then she revived. 

Q. Don't you know there is a hard master ? A. 
Yes. 

' Reply. Don't serve that hard master, you know 
who. 

Q. Do you believe ? Then again she was in a fit, 
and he again rub'd her breast &c. . . . He wrought 
his fingers before her eyes and asked her if she saw 
the witches? A. No. . . . 

Q. Who is it that afflicts you ? A. 1 know not, 
there is a great many of them. . . . 

Q. You have seen the black man, hant you? A. 
No. 

Reply. I hope you never shall. 

Q. You have had a book offered you, hant you ? 
A. No. 

Q. The brushing of you gives you ease, don't it? 
A. Yes. She turn'd herselfe, and a little groan'd. 

Q. Now the witches scratch you, and pinch you, 



404 THE WITCHCRAFT. 

and bite you, don't they ? A. Yes. Then he put his 
hand upon her breast and belly, viz. on the clothes 
over her, and felt a living thing, as he said; which 
moved the father also to feel, and some others. 

Q. Don't you feel the live thing in the bed? 
A. No. . . . 

Q. Shall we go to pray . . . spelling the word. 
A. Yes. The father went to prayer for perhaps half 
an hour, chiefly against the power of the devil and 
witchcraft, and that God would bring out the afflict- 
ers. . . . After prayer he [the son] proceeded. 

Q. You did not hear when we were at prayer did 
you? A. Yes. 

Q. You don't hear always ? you don't hear some- 
times past a word or two, do you ? A. No. Then 
turning him about said, this is just another Mercy 
Short. . . . 

Q. What does she eat or drink? A. Not eat at 
all ; but drink rum.^ 

To sanctify to the godly the ravings of this drunken 
and abandoned wench was a solemn joy to the heart 
of this servant of Christ, who gave his life to " un- 
wearied cares and pains, to rescue the miserable from 
the lions and bears of hell," ^ therefore he prepared 
another tract. But his hour was well-nigh come. 
Though it was impossible that retribution should be 
meted out to him for his crimes, at least he did not 

1 More Wonders, pp. 13, 14. 

2 Idem, p. 10. 



THE WITCHCRAFT. 405 

escape unscathed, for Calef and the Brattles, who had 
long been on his father's track and his, now seized 
him by the throat. He knew well they had been 
with him in the chamber of Margaret Rule, that they 
had gathered all the evidence ; and so when Calef 
sent him a challenge to stand forth and defend him- 
self, he shuffled and equivocated. 

At length a rumor spread abroad that a volume was 
to be published exposing the whole black history, and 
then the priest began to cower. His Diary is full of 
his prayers and lamentations. " The book is printed, 
and the impression is this week arrived here. ... I 
set myself to humble myself before the Lord under 
these humbling and wondrous dispensations, and ob- 
tain the pardon of my sins, that have rendered me 
worthy of such dispensations. . . . 

" 28d. 10m. Saturday. — The Lord has permitted 
Satan to raise an extraordinary storm upon my father 
and myself. All the rage of Satan against the holy 
churches of the Lord falls upon us. First Calf's book, 
and then Coleman's, do set the people in a mighty 
ferment. All the adversaries of the churches lay their 
heads together, as if, by blasting of us, they hoped 
utterly to blow up all. The Lord fills my soul with 
consolations, inexpressible consolations, when I think 
on my conformity to my Lord Jesus Christ in the 
injuries and reproaches that are cast upon me. . . . 

" 5d. 2m. Saturday [1701]. — I find the enemies of 
the churches are set with an implacable enmity against 
myself ; and one vile fool, namely, R. Calf, is employed 



406 THE WITCHCRAFT. 

by them to go on with more of his filthy scribbles to 
hurt my precious opportunities of glorifying my Lord 
Jesus Christ. I had need be much in prayer unto my 
glorious Lord that he would preserve his poor servant 
from the malice of this evil generation, and of that 
vile man particularly." ^ 

" More Wonders of the Invisible World " appeared 
in 1700, and such was the terror the clergy still in- 
spired it is said it had to be sent to London to be 
printed, and when it was published no bookseller in 
Boston dared to offer it in his shop.^ Yet though 
it was burnt in the college yard by the order of In- 
crease Mather, it was widely read, and dealt the death- 
blow to the witchcraft superstition of New England. 
It did more than this : it may be said to mark an era 
in the intellectual development of Massachusetts, for 
it shook to its centre that moral despotism which the 
pastors still kept almost unimpaired over the minds 
of their congregations, by demonstrating to the people 
the necessity of thinking for themselves. But what 
the fate of its authors would have been had the priests 
still ruled may be guessed by the onslaught made on 
them by those who sat at the Mathers' feet. " Spit 
on. Calf ; thou shalt be but like the viper on Pauls 
hand, easily shaken off, and without any damage to 
the servant of the Lord." ^ 

1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. 1855-^8, pp. 290-293. 
^ Some Few Remarks, p. 9. 
8 Idem, p. 22. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

BRATTLE CHURCH. 

If the working of the human mind is mechanical, 
the quality of its action must largely depend upon the 
training it receives. Viewed as civilizing agents, 
therefore, systems of education might be tested by 
their tendency to accelerate or retard the intellectual 
development of the race. The proposition is capable 
of being presented with almost mathematical preci- 
sion ; the receptive faculty begins to fail at a compar- 
atively early age ; thereafter new opinions are assimi- 
lated with increasing difficulty until the power is lost. 
This progressive period of life, which is at best brief, 
may, however, be indefinitely shortened by the inter- 
position of artificial obstacles, which have to be over- 
come by a waste of time and energy, before the rea- 
son can act with freedom ; and when these obstacles 
are sufficiently formidable, the whole time is con- 
sumed and men are stationary. The most effectual 
impediments are those prejudices which are so easily 
implanted in youth, and which acquire tremendous 
power when based on superstitious terrors. Herein, 
then, lies the radical divergence between theological 
and scientific training : the one, by inculcating that 
tradition is sacred, that accurate investigation is sac- 



408 BRATTLE CHURCH. 

rilege, certain to be visited with terrific punishment, 
and that the highest moral virtue is submission to au- 
thority, seeks to paralyze exact thought, and to pro- 
duce a condition in which dogmatic statements of 
fact, and despotic rules of conduct, will be received 
with abject resignation ; the other, by stimulating 
the curiosity, endeavors to provoke inquiry, and, by 
encouraging a scrutiny of what is obscure, tries to 
put the mind in an impartial and questioning attitude 
toward all the phenomena of the universe. 

The two methods are irreconcilable, and spring from 
the great primary instincts which are called conserva- 
tism and liberality. Necessarily the movement of any 
community must correspond exactly with the prepon- 
derance of liberalism. Where the theological incu- 
bus is unresisted it takes the form of a sacred caste, 
as among the Hindoos ; appreciable advance then 
ceases, except from some external pressure, such as 
conquest. The same tendencies in a mitigated form 
are seen in Spain, whereas Germany is scientific. 

Such being the ceaseless conflict between these nat- 
ural forces, the vantage-points for which the oppos- 
ing parties have always struggled in western Europe 
are the pulpits and the universities. Through women 
the church can reach children at their most impres- 
sionable age, while at the universities the teachers are 
taught. Obviously, if a priesthood can control both 
positions their influence must be immense. At the 
beginning of any movement the conservatives are al- 
most necessarily in possession, and their worst reverses 



BRATTLE CHURCH. 409 

have come from defection from within ; for unless 
their organization is so perfect as not only to be ani- 
mated by a single purpose, but capable of being con- 
trolled by a single will, liberals will penetrate within 
the fold, and if they can maintain their footing and 
preach with the authority of the ancient tradition it 
leads to revolution. It was thus the Reformation was 
accomplished. 

The clergy of Massachusetts, with the true priestly 
instinct, took in the bearings of their situation from 
the instant they recognized that their political suprem- 
acy was passing away, and in order to keep their 
organization in full vigor they addressed themselves 
with unabated energy to enforcing the discipline which 
had been established ; at the same time they set the 
ablest of their number on guard at Harvard. But 
the task was beyond their strength ; they might as 
well have tried to dam the rising tide with sand. 

There is a limit to the capacity of even the most 
gifted man, and Increase Mather committed a fatal 
error when he tried to be professor, clergyman, and 
statesman at once. He was, it is true, made presi- 
dent in 1685, but the next year John Leverett and 
William Brattle were chosen tutors and fellows, who 
soon developed into ardent liberals ; so it happened 
that when the reverend rector went abroad in 1688, 
in his character of politician, he left the college in 
the complete control of his adversaries. He was ab- 
sent four years, and during this interval the man 
was educated who was destined to overthrow the Cam- 



410 BRATTLE CHURCH. 

bridge Platform, the corner-stone of the conservative 
power. 

Benjamin Colman was one of Leverett's favorite 
pupils and the intimate friend of Pemberton. As he 
was to be a minister, he stayed at Cambridge until he 
took his master's degree in 1695 ; he then sailed at 
once for England in the Swan. When she had been 
some weeks at sea she was attacked by a French pri- 
vateer, who took her after a sharp action. During 
the fight Colman attracted attention by his coolness ; 
but he declared that though he fired like the rest, 
" he was sensible of no courage but of a great deal of 
fear ; and when they had received two or three broad- 
sides he wondered when his courage would come, as 
he had heard others talk." ^ 

After the capture the Frenchmen stripped him and 
put him in the hold, and had it not been for a Ma- 
dame Allaire, who kept his money for him, he might 
very possibly have perished from the exposure of an 
imprisonment in France, for his lungs were delicate. 
Moreover, at this time of his life he was always a 
pauper, for he was not only naturally generous, but 
so innocent and confiding as to fall a victim to any 
clumsy sharper. Of course he reached London pen- 
niless and in great depression of spirits ; but he soon 
became known among the dissenting clergy, and at 
length settled at Bath, where he preached two years. 
He seems to have formed singularly strong friend- 
ships while in England, one of which was with Mr. 
^ Life of B. Colman, p. 6. 



i 



BRATTLE CHURCH. 411 

Walter Singer, at whose house he passed much time, 
and who wrote him at parting, " Methinks there is 
one place vacant in my affections, which nobody can 
fill beside you. But this blessing was too great for 
me, and God has reserved it for those that more de- 
served it. — I cannot but hope sometimes that Prov- 
idence has yet in store so much happiness for me, 
that I shall yet see you." ^ 

Meanwhile opinion was maturing fast at home ; the 
passions of the witchcraft convulsion had gone deep, 
and in 1697 a movement began under the guidance 
of Leverett and the Brattles to form a liberal Con- 
gregational church. The close on which the meeting- 
house was to stand was conveyed by Thomas Brattle 
to trustees on January 10, 1698, and from the outset 
there seems to have been no doubt as to whom the 
pastor should be. On the 10th of May, 1699, a for- 
mal invitation was dispatched to Colman by a com- 
mittee, of which Thomas Brattle was chairman, and 
it was accompanied by letters from many prominent 
liberals. Leverett wrote, " I shall exceedingly re- 
joice at your return to your country. We want per- 
sons of your character. The affair offered to your 
consideration is of the greatest moment." William 
Brattle was even more emphatic, while Pemberton 
assured him that " the gentlemen who solicit your re- 
turn are mostly known to you — men of repute and 
figure, from whom you may expect generous treat- 
ment ; . . . I believe your return will be pleasing to 
^ Life of B. Colman, p. 48. 



412 BRATTLE CHURCH. 

all that know you, I am sure it will be inexpressi- 
bly so to your unfeigned friend and servant." ^ It 
was, however, thought prudent to have him ordained 
in London, since there was no probability that the 
clergy of Massachusetts would perform the rite. 
When he landed in November, after an absence of 
four years, he was in the flush of early manhood, 
highly trained for theological warfare, having seen 
the world, and by no means in awe of his old pastor, 
the reverend president of Harvard. 

The first step after his arrival was to declare the 
liberal policy, and this was done in a manifesto which 
was published almost at once.^ The efficiency of the 
Congregational organization depended upon the per- 
fection of the guard which the ministers and the con- 
gregations mutually kept over each other. On the 
one hand no dangerous element could creep in among 
the people through the laxness of the elder, since all 
candidates for the communion had to pass through 
the ordeal of a public examination ; on the other the 
orthodoxy of the ministers was provided for, not only 
by restricting the elective body to the communicants, 
but by the power of the ordained clergy to " except 
against any election of a pastor who . . . may be 
. . . unfit for the common service of the gospel." ^ 

The declaration of the Brattle Street " undertakers " 

^ Life of B. Colman, pp. 43, 44. 
* History of Brattle St. Church, p. 20. 

' Propositions determined by the Assembly of Ministers. Mag- 
nalia, bk. 5, Hist. Remarks, § 8. 



BRATTLE CHURCH. 413 

cut this system at the root, for they announced their 
intention to dispense with the relation of experiences, 
thus practically throwing their communion open to all 
respectable persons who would confess the Westmin- 
ster Creed ; and more fatal still, they absolutely de- 
stroyed the homogeneousness of the ecclesiastical con- 
stituency : " We cannot confine the right of chusing 
a minister to the male communicants alone, but we 
think that every baptized adult person who contrib- 
utes to the maintenance, should have a vote in elect- 



mff. 



" 1 



They also proposed several innovations of minor 
importance, such as relaxing the baptismal regula- 
tions, and somewhat changing the established service 
by having the Bible read without comment. 

Their temporal power was gone, toleration was the 
law of the land they had once possessed, and now an 
onslaught was to be made upon the intellectual asceu- 
denc}"^ which the clergy felt certain of maintaining 
over their people, if only they could enforce obedience 
in their own ranks. The danger, too, was the more 
alarming because so insidious ; for, though their prop- 
ositions seemed reasonable, it was perfectly obvious 
that should the liberals succeed in forcing their church 
within the pale of the orthodox communion, discipline 
must end, and the pulpits might at any time be filled 
with men capable of teaching the most subversive doc- 
trines. Although such might be the inexorable des- 
tiny of the Massachusetts hierarchy, it was not in 
1 History of Brattle St. Church, p. 25, Prop. 16. 



414 BRATTLE CHURCH. 

ecclesiastical human nature to accept the dispensation 
with meekness, and the utterances of the conservative 
divines seem hardly to breathe the spirit of that gos- 
pel they preached at such interminable length. 

Yet it was very difficult to devise a scheme of re- 
sistance. They were powerless to coerce ; for, al- 
though Increase Mather had taken care, when at the 
summit of his power, to have a statute passed which 
had the effect of reenacting the Cambridge Platform, 
it had been disapproved by the king ; therefore, moral 
intimidation was the only weapon which could be em- 
ployed. Now, aside from the fact that men like 
Thomas Brattle and Leverett were not timorous, their 
position was at this moment very strong from the 
stand they had taken in the witchcraft troubles, and 
worst of all, they were openly supported by William 
Brattle, who was already a minister, and by Pember- 
ton, who was a fellow of Harvard, and soon to be 
ordained. 

The attack was, however, begun by Mr. Higginson, 
and Mr. Noyes, of witchcraft memory, in a long re- 
buke, whose temper may be imagined from such a 
sentence as this : " We cannot but think you might 
have entered upon your declaration with more rev- 
erence and humility than so solemnly to appeal to 
God, your judge, that you do it with all the sincerity 
and seriousness the nature of your engagement com- 
mands from you ; seeing you were most of you much 
unstudied in the controversial points of church order 
and discipline, and yet did not advise with the neigh- 



BRATTLE CHURCH. 415 

boring churches . . . but with a great deal of con- 
fidence and freedom, set up by yourselves." The 
letter then goes on to adjure them to revoke the man- 
ifesto, and adjust matters with the "neighbouring 
elders," " that so the right hand of fellowshijD may 
be given to your pastor by other pastors, . . . and 
that you may not be the beginning of a schism that 
will dishonour God, . . . and be a matter of triumph 
to the bad." ^ 

Cotton Mather's Diary, however, gives the most 
pleasing view of the high churchmen : — 

" 1G99. 7th, 10th m. (Dec.) I see another day of 
temptation begun upon the town and land. A com- 
pany of headstrong men in the town, the chief of 
whom are full of malignity to the holy ways of our 
churches, have built in the town another meeting- 
house. To delude many better meaning men in their 
own company, and the churches in the neighbourhood, 
they passed a vote in the foundation of the proceed- 
ings that they would not vary from the practice of 
these churches, except in one little particular. 

" But a young man born and bred here, and hence 
gone for England, is now returned hither at their in- 
vitation, equipped with an ordination to qualify him 
for all that is intended on his returning and arriving 
here ; these fallacious people desert their vote, and 
without the advice or knowledge of the ministers in 
the vicinity, they have published, under the title of a 
manifesto, certain articles that utterly subvert our 
» History of Brattle St. Church, pp. 29-37. 



416 BRATTLE CHURCH. 

churches, and invite an ill party, through all the coun- 
try, to throw all into confusion on the first opportuni- 
ties. This drives the ministers that would be faithful 
unto the Lord Jesus Christ, and his interests in the 
churches, unto a necessity of appearing for their de- 
fence. No little part of these actions must unavoid- 
ably fall to my share. I have already written a large 
monitory letter to these innovators, which, though most 
lovingly penned, yet enrages their violent and imperi- 
ous lusts to carry on the apostacy." 

"1699. 5th d. 11th m. (Saturday.) I see Satan be- 
ginning a terrible shake in the churches of New Eng- 
land, and the innovators that had set up a new church 
in Boston (a new one indeed !) have made a day of 
temptation among us. The men are ignorant, arro- 
gant, obstinate, and full of malice and slander, and 
they fill the land with lies, in the misrepresentations 
whereof I am a very singular sufferer. Wherefore I 
set apart this day again for prayer in my study, to cry 
mightily unto God." ^ 

" 21st d. 11th m. The people of the new church 
in Boston, who, by their late manifesto, went on in an 
ill way, and in a worse frame, and the town was filled 
with sin, and especially with slanders, wherein espe- 
cially my father and myself were sufferers. We two, 
with many prayers and studies, and with humble res- 
ignation of our names unto the Lord, prepared a 
faithful antidote for our churches against the infec- 
tion of the example, which we feared this company 
* History of Harvard, Quincy, L 486, 487, App. x. 



BRATTLE CHURCH. 417 

had given them, and we put it into the press. But 
when the first sheet was near composed at the press, 
I stopped it, with a desire to make one attempt more 
for the bringing of this people to reason. I drew 
up a proposal, and, with another minister, carried it 
unto them, who at first rejected it, but afterward so 
far embraced it, as to promise that they will the next 
week publicly recognize their covenant with God and 
one another, and therewithall declare their adherence 
to the Heads of Agreement of the United Brethren 
in England, and request the communion of our 
churches in that foundation." ^ 

This last statement is marked by the exuberance 
of imagination for which the Mathers are so famed. 
In truth. Dr. Mather had nothing to do with the set- 
tlement. The facts were these : after Brattle Street 
Church was organized, the congregation voted that 
Mr. Colman should ask the ministers of the town to 
keep a day of prayer with them. On the 28th of 
December, 1699, they received the following sugges- 
tive answer : — 

Mr. Colman : 

Whereas you have signified to us that your so- 
ciety have desired us to join with them in a public 
fast, in order to your intended communion, our an- 
swer is, that as we have formerly once and again in- 
sinuated unto you, that if you would in due manner lay 
aside what you call your manifesto, and resolve and 

1 History of Harvard, i. 487, App. x. 



y 



418 BRATTLE CHURCH. 

declare that you will keep to the heads of agreement 
on which the United Brethren in London have made 
their union, and then publicly proceed with the pres- 
ence, countenance, and concurrence of the New Eng- 
land churches, we should be free to give you our fel- 
lowship and our best assistance, which things you 
have altogether declined and neglected to do ; thus we 
must now answer, that, if you will give us the satisfac- 
tion which the law of Christ requires for your disor- 
derly proceedings, we shall be happy to gratify your 
desires ; otherwise, we may not do it, lest ... we be- 
come partakers of the guilt of those irregularities by 
which you have given just cause of offence. . . . 

Increase Mather. 

James Allen.^ 

Under the theocracy a subservient legislature would 
have voted the association " a seditious conspiracy," 
and the country would have been cleared of Leverett, 
Colman, the Brattles, and their abettors ; but in 1700 
the priests no longer manipulated the constituencies, 
and there was actual danger to the conservative cause 
from their violence ; therefore Stoughton exerted him- 
self to muzzle the Mathers, and he did succeed in qui- 
eting them for the moment, though Sewall seems to 
intimate that they submitted with no very good grace : 
[l-fS§-] " Jan^ 24^\ The L* Gov' [Stoughton] calls 
me with him to Mr. Willards, where out of two pa. 
pers Mr. W*" Brattle drew up a third for an accomo- 

^ History of Brattle St. Church, p. 55. 



BRATTLE CHURCH. 419 

datlon to bring on an agreement between the new- 
church and our ministers ; Mr. Colman got his breth- 
ren to subscribe it. . . . Jan^ 25**'. Mr. I. Mather, Mr. 
C. Mather, Mr. Willard, Mr. Wadsworth, and S. S. 
wait on the L* Gov*^ at Mr. Coopers : to confer about 
the writing drawn up the evening before. Was some 
heat ; but grew cahuer, and after lecture agreed to be 
present at the fast which is to be observed Jan'' 31." * 

Humility has sometimes been extolled as the crown- 
ing grace of Christian clergymen, but Cotton Mather's 
Diary shows the intolerable arrogance of the early 
Congregational divines. 

" A wonderful joy filled the hearts of our good 
people far and near, that we had obtained thus much 
from them. Our strife seemed now at an end ; there 
was much relenting in some of their spirits, when they 
saw our condescension, our charity, our compassion. 
We overlooked all past offences. We kept the public 
fast with them . . . and my father preached with 
them on following peace with holiness, and I concluded 
with prayer." ^ 

Yet, although there had been this ostensible recon- 
ciliation, those who have appreciated the sensitiveness 
to sin, of him whom Dr. Eliot calls the patriarch and 
his son, must already feel certain they were incapable 
of letting Colman's impiety pass unrebuked ; indeed, 
the Diary says the " faithful antidote " was at that 
moment in the press, and it was not long before it was 

^ Mass. Hist. Coll. fifth series, vi. 2. 
2 History of Harvard, i. 487, App. x. 



420 BRATTLE CHURCH. 

published, sanctified by their prayers. The patriarch 
began by telling how he was defending the "cause 
of Christ and of his churches in New England," 
and " if we espouse such principles ... we then give 
away the whole Congregational cause at once." ^ He 
assured his hearers that a " wandering Levite " like 
Colman was no more a pastor than he who " has no 
children is a father," ^ he was shocked at the aban- 
donment of the relation of experiences, and was so 
scandalized at reading the Bible without comment he 
could only describe it as " dumb." In a word, there 
was nothing the new congregation had done which 
was not displeasing to the Lord ; but if they had of- 
fended in one particular more than another it was in 
establishing a man in " the pastoral office without the 
approbation of neighbouring churches or elders." ^ To 
this solemn admonition Colman and William Brattle 
had the irreverence to prepare a reply smacking of 
levity ; nevertheless, they began with a grave and no- 
ble definition of their principles. " The liberties and 
privileges which our Lord Jesus Christ has given to 
his church . . . consist . . . in . . . that our con- 
sciences be not imposed on by men or their tradi- 
tions." " We are reflected on as casting dishonour 
on our parents, & their pious design in the first settle- 
ment of this land. . . . Some have made this the great 
design, to be freed from the impositions of men in 

1 Order of the Gospel, pp. 8, 9. 

2 Idem, p. 102; 
' Idem, p. 8. 



BRATTLE CHURCH. 421 

the worship of God. ... In this we are risen up to 
make good their grounds." ^ 

They then went on to expose the abuse of public 
relations of experiences : " But this is the misery, the 
more meek and fearful are hereby kept out of God's 
house, while the more conceited and presumptuous 
never boggle at this, or anything else. But it seems 
there is a gross corruption of this laudable practice 
which the author does well to censure ; and that is, 
when some, who have no good intention of their own, 
get others to devise a relation for them." ^ They even 
dared to intimate that it did not savor of modesty for 
the patriarch " to think any one of his sermons, or 
short comments, can edifie more than the reading of 
twenty chapters." ^ And then they added some sen- 
tences, which were afterward declared by the vener- 
able victim to be as scurrilous as other portions of the 
pamphlet were profane. 

" We are assured, the author is esteemed more a 
Presbyterian than a Congregational man, by scores 
of his friends in London. He is lov'd and reverenced 
for a moderate spirit, a peaceable disposition, and a 
temper so widely different from his late brothers in 
London. . . . Did our reverend author appear the 
same here, we should be his easie proselites too. But 
we are loath to say how he forfeits that venerable 
character, which might have consecrated his name to 

1 Gospel Order Revived, Epistle Dedicatory. 

2 Idem, p. 9. 
' Idem, p. 15. 



422 BRATTLE CHURCH. 

posterity, more than his learning, or other honorary 
titles can." ^ 

No printer in Boston dared to be responsible for 
this ribaldry, and when it came home from New York 
and was actually cast before the people, words fail to 
convey the condition into which the patriarch was 
thrown. At last his emotions found a vent in a tract 
which he prepared jointly with his son. 

" A moral heathen would not have done as he has 
done.^ . . . There is no one thing, which does more 
threaten or disgrace New-England, than want of due 
respect unto superiors.^ ... It is a disgrace to the 
name of Presbyterian, that such as he is should pre- 
tend unto it * . . . and if our children should learn from 
them, ... we may tremble to think, what a flood of 
profaneness and atheism would break in upon us, and 
ripen us for the dreadfullest judgments of God.^ . . . 
They assault him [the aged president] with a volley of 
rude jeers and taunts, as if they were so many children 
of Bethel." ^ Among these taunts some struck deep, 
for they are quoted at length. " 'Abundance of people 
have long obstinately believed, that the contest on his 
part, is more for lordship and dominion, than for 
truth.' But there are many more such passages, which 
laid altogether, would make a considerable dung- 
hil."" They dwelt with pathos upon those sacred rites 

^ Gospel Order Revived, pp. 34, 35. 

2 Collection of Some of the More Offensive Matterc, Preface. 

8 Idem, p. 10. * Idem, p. 13. « Idem, p. 7. 

^ Idem, p. 8. ' Idem, p. 9. 



BRATTLE CHURCH. 423 

desecrated by these " unsanctified " " young men " in 
their " miserable pamphlet." " The Lord is exceed- 
ingly glorified, and his people are edified, by the ac- 
counts, which the candidates, of the communion in our 
churches give of that self-examination which is by plain 
institution ... a qualification, of the communicants. 
Now these think it not enough to charge the churches, 
which require & expect such accounts, with exceed- 
ingly provoking the Lord. But of the tears dropt 
by holy souls on those occasions, they say with a scoff, 
' whether they be for joy or grief, we are left in the 
dark.' " ^ But the suffering divines found peace in 
knowing that Christ himself would inflict the punish- 
ment upon these abandoned men which the priests 
would have meted out with holy joy had they still 
possessed the power. 

" Considering that the things contained in their 
pamphlet, are a deep apostasy, in conjunction with 
such open impiety, and profane scurrility against the 
holy wayes in which our fathers walked, in case it be- 
come the sin of the land, (as it will do if not duely 
testified against) we may fear that some heavy judg- 
ment will come upon the whole land. And will not 
the holy Lord Jesus Christ, who walks in the midst 
of his golden candlesticks, make all the churches to 
know . . . that these men have provoked the Lord I " ^ 

Yet, notwithstanding the Mathers' piteous prayers, 
God heeded them not, and the rising tide that was 

1 Collection of Some of the More Offensive Matters, p. 6. 

2 Idetn, pp. 18, 19. 



424 BRATTLE CHURCH. 

sweeping over them soon drowned their cries. Brattle 
Street congregation became an honored member of 
the orthodox communion, the principles which ani- 
mated its founders spread apace, and the name of 
Benjamin Colman waxed great in the land. The 
liberals had penetrated the stronghold of the church. 



CHAPTER IX. 

HARVARD COLLEGE. 

For more than two centuries one ceaseless anthem 
of adulation has been chanted in Massachusetts in 
honor of the ecclesiastics who founded Harvard Uni- 
versity, and this act has not infrequently been cited 
as incontrovertible proof that they were both liberal 
and progressive at heart. The laudation of ancestors 
is a task as easy as it is popular ; but history deals 
with the sequence of cause and effect, and an exam- 
ination of facts, apart from sentiment, tends to show 
that in building a college the clergy were actuated by 
no loftier motive than intelligent self-interest, if, in- 
deed, they were not constrained thereto by the inex- 
orable exigencies of their position. 

The truth of this proposition becomes apparent if 
the soundness of the following analysis be conceded. 

There would seem to be a point in the pathway of 
civilization where every race passes more or less com- 
pletely under the dominion of a sacred caste ; when 
and how the more robust have emerged into freedom 
is uncertain, but enough is known to make it possible 
to trace the process by which this insidious power is 
acquired, and the means by which it is perpetuated. 
A flood of light has, moreover, been shed on this class 



426 HARVARD COLLEGE. 

of subjects by the recent remarkable investigations 
among the Zunis.^ 

Most American Indians are in the matriarchal pe- 
riod of development, which precedes the patriarchal; 
and it is then, should they become sedentary, that 
caste appears to be born. Some valuable secret, such 
as a cure for the bite of the rattlesnake, is discovered, 
and this gives the finder, and chosen members of his 
clan with whom he shares it, a peculiar sanctity in 
the eyes of the rest of the tribe. Like facts, however, 
become known to other clans, and then coalitions are 
made which take the form of esoteric societies, and 
from these the stronger savages gradually exclude the 
weaker and their descendants. Meanwhile an elabo- 
rate ritual is developed, and so an hereditary priest- 
hood comes into life, which always claims to have re- 
ceived its knowledge by revelation, and which teaches 
that resistance to its will is sacrilege. Nevertheless 
the sacerdotal power is seldom firmly established 
without a struggle, the memory whereof is carefully 
preserved as a warning of the danger of incurring the 
divine wrath. A good example of such a myth is the 
fable of the rebellious Zuni fire-priest, who at the 
prayer of his orthodox brethren was destroyed with 
all his clan by a boiling torrent poured from the 
burning mountain, sacred to their order, by the aveng- 
ing gods. Compare this with the story of Korah; 
and it is interesting to observe how the priestly chron- 

1 Made by Mr. F. H. Gushing, of the Bureau of Ethnology, 
Smithsonian Institution. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 427 

icier, in order to throw the profounder awe about his 
class, has made the great national prophet the author 
of the exclusion of the body of the Levites from the 
caste, in favor of his own brother. " And they gath- 
ered themselves together against Moses and against 
Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon 
you, seeing all the congregation are holy, . . . where- 
fore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation 
of the Lord ? 

" And when Moses heard it, he fell upon his face." 
Then he told Korah and his followers, who were de- 
scendants of Levi and legally entitled to act as priests 
by existing customs, to take censers and burn incense, 
and it would appear whether the Lord would respect 
their offering. So every man took his censer, and 
Korah and two hundred and fifty more stood in the 
door of the tabernacle. 

Then Moses said, if " the earth open her mouth, 
and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto 
them, and they go down quick into the pit ; then 
ye shall understand that these men have provoked 
the Lord. . . . 

" And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed 
them up, and their houses, and all the men that ap- 
pertained unto Korah, and all their goods. 

" They, and all that appertained to them, went 
dowTi alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon 
them: . . . And all Israel that were round about 
them fled at the cry of them : for they said, Lest the 
earth swallow us up also." ^ 

1 Numbers xvi. 



428 HARVARD COLLEGE. 

Traces of a similar conflict are found in Hindoo 
sacred literature, and probably the process has been 
well-nigh universal. The caste, therefore, originates 
in knowledge, real and pretended, kept by secret tra- 
dition in certain families, and its power is maintained 
by systematized terrorism. But to learn the myste- 
ries and ritual requires a special education, hence 
those destined for the pi-iesthood have careful provi- 
sion made for their instruction. The youthful Zuni is 
taught at the sacred college at the shrine of his order ; 
the pious Hindoo lives for years with some famous 
Brahmin ; as soon as the down came on the cheek, the 
descendants of Aaron were taken into the Temple at 
Jerusalem, and all have read how Hannah carried 
the infant Samuel to the house of the Lord at Shiloh, 
and how the child did minister unto the Lord before 
Eli the priest. 

These facts seem to lead to well-defined conclusions 
when applied to New England history. In their pas- 
'- sionate zeal the colonists conceived the idea of repro- 
ducing, as far as they could, the society of the Penta- 
teuch, or, in other words, of reverting to the archaic 
, stage of caste ; and in point of fact they did succeed 
»^/ in creating a theocratic despotism which lasted in full 
force for more than forty years. Of course, in the 
seventeenth century such a phase of feeling was ephem- 
eral ; but the phenomena which attended it are excep- 
tionally interesting, and possibly they are somewhat 
similar to those which accompany the liberation of a 
primitive people. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 429 

The knowledge which divided the Massachusetts 
clergy from other men was their supposed proficiency 
in the interpretation of the ancient writings contain- 
ing the revelations of God. For the perpetuation 
of this lore a seminary was as essential to them as 
an association of priests for the instruction of neo- 
phytes is to the Zuni now, or as the training at the 
Temple was to the Jews. In no other way could the 
popular faith in their special sanctity be sustained. 
It is also true that few priesthoods have made more 
systematic use of terror. The slaughter of Anne 
Hutchinson and her family was exultingiy declared to 
be the judgment of God for defaming the elders. In- 
crease Mather denounced the disobedient Colman in 
the words of Moses to Korah; Cotton Mather rev- 
elled in picturing the torments of the bewitched ; and, 
even in the last century Jonathan Edwards frightened 
people into convulsions by his preaching. On the 
other hand, it is obvious that the reproduction of the 
Mosaic law could not in the nature of things have 
been complete ; and the two weak points in the other- 
wise strong position of the clergy were that the spirit 
of their age did not permit them to make their order 
hereditary, nor, although their college was a true theo- 
logical school, did they perceive the danger of allow- 
ing any lay admixture. The tendency to weaken the 
force of the discipline is obvious, yet they were led to 
abandon the safe Biblical precedent, not only by their 
own early associations, but by their hatred of anything 
savoring: of Catholicism. 



430 HARVARD COLLEGE. 

Men to be great leaders must exalt their cause 
above themselves ; and if so godly a man as the Rev. 
Increase Mather can be said to have had a human 
failing it was an inordinate love of money and of flat- 
tery. The first of these peculiarities showed itself 
early in life when, as his son says, he was reluctant 
to settle at the North Church, because of " views he 
had of greater service elsewhere." ^ In other words, 
the parish was not liberal ; for it seems " the deacons 
. . . were not spirited like some that have succeeded 
them ; and the leaders of the more honest people 
also, were men of a low, mean, sordid spirit. . . . For 
one of his education, and erudition, and gentlemanly 
spirit, and conversation, to be so creepled and kept in 
such a depressing poverty ! — In these distresses, it 
was to little purpose for him to make his complaint 
unto man ! If he had, it would have been basely im- 
proved unto his disadvantage."^ His diary teemed 
with repinings. " Oh ! that the Lord Jesus, who 
hears my complaints before him, would either give an 
heart to my people to look after my comfortable sub- 
sistance among them, or . . . remove me to another 
people, who will take care of me, that so I may be in 
a capacity to attend his work, and glorify his name in 
my generation."^ However, matters mended with 
him, for we are assured that " the Glorious One who 
knew the works, and the service and the patience of 
this tempted man, ordered it, that several gentlemen 
of good estate, and of better spirit, were become the 

1 Parentator, p. 25. 2 /^^g^^ p 30^ & idenij p. 33. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 431 

members of his church ; " and from them he had 
" such filial usages ... as took away from him all 
room of repenting, that he had not under his temp- 
tations prosecuted a removal from them." ' 

The presidency of Harvard, though nominally the 
highest place a clergyman could hold in Massachu- 
setts, had always been one of poverty and self-de- 
nial ; for the salary was paid by the legislature, which, 
as the unfortunate Dunster had found, was not dis- 
posed to be generous. Therefore, although Mr, Ma- 
ther was chosen president in 1685, and was after- 
ward confirmed as rector by Andros, he was far too 
pious to be led again into those temptations from 
which he had been delivered by the interposition of 
the Glorious One ; and the last thing he proposed 
was to go into residence and give up his congrega- 
tion. Besides, he was engrossed in politics and went 
to England in 1688, where he stayed four years. 
Meanwhile the real control of education was left in 
the hands of Leverett, who was appointed tutor in 
1686, and of William Brattle, who was in full sym- 
pathy with his policy. Among the many powers 
usurped by the old trading company was that of erect- 
ing corporations ; hence the effect of the judgment 
vacating the patent had been to annul the college 
charter which had been granted by the General 
Court ; 2 and although the institution had gone on 
much as usual after the Revolution, its position was 
felt to be precarious. Such being the situation when 
1 Parentator, pp. 34, 35. 2 93 May, I60O. Mass. Rec. iii. 195. 



432 HARVARD COLLEGE, 

the patriarch came home in 1692 in the plenitude o£ 
power, he conceived the idea of making himself the 
untrammelled master of the university, and he forth- 
with caused a bill to be introduced into the le^slature 
which would certainly have produced that result.^ 
Nor did he meet with any serious opposition in Mas- 
sachusetts, where his power was, for the moment, well- 
nigh supreme. His difficulty lay with the king, since 
the fixed policy of Great Britain was to foster Episco- 
palianism, and of course to obtain some recognition 
for that sect at Cambridge. And so it came to pass 
that all the advantage he reaped by the enactment of 
this singular law was a degree of Doctor of Divinity ^ 
which he gave himself between the approval of the 
bill by Phips and its rejection at London. The com- 
pliment was the more flattering, however, as it was the 
first ever granted in New England. But the clouds 
were fast gathering over the head of this good man. 
Like many another benefactor of his race, he was 
doomed to experience the pangs inflicted by ingrati- 
tude, and indeed his pain was so acute he seldom lost 
an opportunity of giving it public expression ; to use 
his own words of some years later, " these are the last 
lecture sermons ... to be preached by me. . . . The 
ill treatment which I have had from those from whom 
I had reason to have expected better, have discour- 
aged me from being any more concerned on such oc- 
casions." ^ 

1 Province Latvs, 1692-93, c. 10. 

3 Sept. 5, 1602. Quincy's Histan/ of Harvard, i. 71. 

* Address to Sermon, The Righteous Alan a Blessing, 1702. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 433 

Certainly he was in a false position ; he was neces- 
sarily unappreciated by the liberals, and he had not 
only alienated many staunch conservatives by his ac- 
ceptance of the charter, but he had embittered them 
by I'igorously excluding ail except his particular fac- 
tion from Phips's council. To his deep chagrin, the 
elections of 1698 went in favor of many of these 
thankless men, and his discontent soon took the form 
of an intense longing to go abroad in some official 
position which would give him importance. The only 
possible opening seemed to be to get himself made 
agent to negotiate a charter for Harvard ; and there- 
fore he soon had " angelical " suggestions that God 
needed him in England to glorify his name. 

" 1693. September 3d. As I was riding to preach 
at Cambridge, I prayed to God, — begged that my 
labors might be blessed to the souls of the students; 
at the which I was much melted. Also saying to the 
Lord, that some workings of his Providence seemed 
to intimate, that I must be returned to England 
again ; . . . I was inexpressibly melted, and that for 
a considerable time, and a stirring suggestion, that to 
England I must go. In this there was something ex- 
traordinary, either divine or angelical." 

" December 30th. Meltings before the Lord this 
day when praying, desiring being returned to England 
again, there to do service to his name, and persuasions 
that the Lord will appear therein." 

" 1694. January 27th. Prayers and supplications 
that tidings may come from England, that may be 



434 HARVARD COLLEGE. 

some direction to me, as to my returning thither or 
otherwise, as shall be most for his glory." 

"March 13th. This morning with prayers and 
tears I begged of God that I might hear from mj^ 
friends and acquaintance in England something that 
should encourage and comfort me. Such tidings sure 
coming, but I know not what it is. God has heard 
me." 1 

His craving to escape from the country was in- 
creased by the nagging of the legislature ; for so early 
as December, 1693, the representatives passed the first 
of a long series of resolves, " that the president of 
Harvard College for the time being shall reside there, 
as hath been accustomed in time past." ^ Now this 
was precisely what the Reverend Doctor was deter- 
mined he would not do ; nor could he resign with- 
out losing all hope of his agency ; so it is not sur- 
prising that as time went on he wrestled with the 
Deity. 

1698. " September 25th. This day as I was wres- 
tling with the Lord, he gave me glorious and heart- 
melting persuasions, that he has work for me to do in 
England, for the glory of his name. My soul re- 
joiceth in the Lord." ^ 

Doubtless his trials were severe, but the effect upon 
his temper was unfortunate. He brought forward 
scheme after scheme, and the corporation was made 

^ History of Harvard, i. 475, 476, App. ix. 

2 Court Rec. vi. 316. 

8 History of Harvard, i. 480, App. ix. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 435 

to address the legislature, and then the legislature 
was pestered to accede to the prayer of the corpora- 
tion, until everybody was wrought to a pitch of ner- 
vous irritation ; he himself was always jotting in his 
Diary what he had on foot, mixed with his hopes and 
prayers. 

" 1696. December 11th. I was with the represen- 
tatives in the General Court, and did acquaint them 
with my purpose of undertaking a voyage for Eng- 
land in the spring (if the Lord will), in order to the 
attainment of a good settlement for the college." 

" December 28th. The General Court have done 
nothing for the poor college. . . . The corporation 
are desirous that I should go to England on the col- 
lege's account." 

1696. " April 19th (Sabbath.) In the morning, 
as I was praying in my closet, my heart was marvel- 
lously melted with the persuasion, that I should glo- 
rify Christ in England." 

" 1697. June 7th. Discourse with ministers about 
the college, and the corporation unanimously desired 
me to take a voyage for England on the college's 
account." ^ 

But of what the senior tutor was doing with the 
rising generation he took no note at all. His attention 
was probably first attracted by rumors of the Brattle 
Church revolt, for not till 1697 was he able to divert 
his thoughts from himself long enough to observe that 
all was not as it should be at Cambridge. Then, at 
^ History of Harvard, i. 476, App. ix. 



436 HARVARD COLLEGE. 

length, he made an effort to get rid of Leverett by 
striking his name from the list of fellows when a bill 
for incorporation was brought into the legislature ; 
but this crafty politician had already become too 
strong in the house of representatives, of which he 
was soon after made speaker. 

Two years later, however, the conservative clergy 
made a determined effort and prepared a bill contain- 
ing a religious test, which they supported with a peti- 
tion praying " that, in the charter for the college, our 
holy religion may be secured to us and unto our pos- 
terity, by a provision, that no person shall be chosen 
president, or fellow, of the college, but such as declare 
their adherence unto the principles of reformation, 
which were espoused and intended by those who first 
settled the country . . . and have hitherto been the 
general profession of New England." ^ This time 
they narrowly missed success, for the bill passed the 
houses, but was vetoed by Lord Bellomont. 

Hitherto Cotton Mather had shown an unfilial lack 
of interest in his father's ambition to serve the pub- 
lic ; but this summer he also began to have assurances 
from God. One cause for his fervor may have been 
the death of the Rev. Mr. Morton, who was conceded 
to stand next in succession to the presidency, and he 
therefore supposed himself to be sure of the office 
should a vacancy occur.^ 

1 History of Harvard, i. 87. 

2 Idem, i. 99. 

8 Idem, i. 102. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 4S7 

" 1699. 7th d. 4th m. (June.) The General Court 
has, divers times of late years, had under consider- 
ation the matter of the settlement of the colleere, 
which was like still to issue in a voyage of my father 
to England, and the matter is now again considered. 
I have made much prayer about it many and many 
a time. Nevertheless, I never could have my mind 
raised unto any particular faith about it, one way or 
another. But this day, as I was (may I not say) in 
the spirit, it was in a powerful manner assured me 
from heaven, that my father should one day be car- 
ried into England, and that he shall there glorify the 
Lord Jesus Christ ; • . . And thou, O Mather the 
younger, shalt live to see this accomplished ! " ^ 

" 16th d. 5tli m. (July.) Being full of distress 
in my spirit, as I was at prayer in my study at noon, 
it was told me from heaven, that my father shall be 
carried from me unto England, and that my opportu- 
nities to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ will, on that 
occasion, be gloriously accommodated.'^ 

" 18th d. 5th m. . . . And now behold a most unin- 
telligible dispensation ! At this very time, even about 
noon, instead of having the bill for the college en- 
acted, as was exjDected, the governor plainly rejected 
it, because of a provision therein, made for the religion 
of the country." 

After the veto the patriarch seems to have got the 
upper hand for a season, and to have made some 
arrangement by which he evicted his adversary, as ap- 
1 History of Harvard, i. 482, 483, App. x. 



438 HARVARD COLLEGE. 

pears by a very dissatisfied letter written by Leverett 
in August, 1699 : "As soon as I got home I was in- 
formed, that Rev. President (I. M.), held a corpora- 
tion at the college the 7th inst., and the said cor- 
poration, after the publication of the new settlement^ 
made choice of Mr. Flynt to be one of the tutors at 
college. ... I have not the late act for incorjao- 
rating the college at hand, nor have I seen the new 
temporary settlement; but I perceive, that all the 
members of the late corporation were not notified to 
be at the meeting. I can't say how legal these late 
proceedings are ; but it is wonderful, that an estab- 
lishment for so short a time as till October next, 
should be made use of so soon to introduce an un- 
necessary addition to that society." ^ 

A long weary year passed, during which Dr. Mar 
ther must have suffered keenly from the public in- 
gratitude; still, at its end he was happy, since he 
felt certain of being rewarded by the Lord ; for, just 
as the earl's administration was closing, he had suc- 
ceeded by unremitting toil in so adjusting the legis- 
lature as to think the spoil his own ; when, alas, 
suddenly, without warning, in the most distressing 
manner, the prize slipped into Bellomont's pocket. 
How severely his faith was tried appears from his 
son's Diary. 

" 1700. 16th d. 4th mo. (Lord's Day.) I am 
going to relate one of the most astonishing things that 
ever befell in all the time of my pilgrimage. 
1 History of Harvard, i. 500, App. xvi. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 439 

"A particular faith had been unaccountably pro- 
duced in my father's heart, and in my own, that God 
will carry him unto England, and there ^ve him a 
short but great opportunity to glorify the Lord Jesus 
Christ, before his entrance into the heavenly kingdom. 
There appears no probability of my father's going 
thither but in an agency to obtain a charter for the 
college. This matter having been for several years 
upon the very point of being carried in the General 
Assembly, hath strangely miscarried when it hath 
come to the birth. It is now again before the As- 
sembly, in circumstances wherein if it succeed not, it 
is never like to be revived and resumed any more. . . . 

" But the matter in the Assembly being likely now 
to come unto nothing, I was in this day in extreme 
distress of spirit concerning it. . . . After I had fin- 
ished all the other duties of this day, I did in ray dis- 
tress cast myself prostrate on my study floor before 
the Lord. ... I spread before him the consequences 
of things, and the present posture and aspect of them, 
and, having told the Lord, that I had always taken a 
particular faith to be a work of heaven on the minds 
of the faithful, but if it should prove a deceit in that 
remarkable instance which was now the cause of my 
agony, I should be cast into a most wonderful confu- 
sion ; I then begged of the Lord, that, if ray particular 
faith about my father's voyage to England were not 
a delusion, he would be pleased to renew it upon me. 
All this while my heart had the coldness of a stone 
npon it, and the straitness that is to be expected from 



440 HARVARD COLLEGE. 

the lone exercise of reason. But now all on the sud- 
den I felt an inexpressible force to fall on my mind, 
an afflatus, which cannot be described in words ; nojie 
knows it but he that has it. ... It was told me, that 
the Lord Jesus Christ loved my father, and loved me, 
and that he took delight in us, as in two of his faith- 
ful servants, and that he had not permitted us to be 
deceived in our particular faith, but that my father 
should be carried into England, and there glorify the 
Lord Jesus Christ before his passing into glory. . . . 
" Having left a flood of tears from me, by these 
rages from the invisible world, on my study floor, I 
rose and went into my chair. There I took up my 
Bible, and the first place that I opened was at Acts 
xxvii. 23-25, ' There stood by me an angel of God, 
whose I am, and whom I serve, saying. Fear not, thou 
must be brought before Caesar.' ... A new flood of 
tears gushed from my flowing eyes, and I broke out 
into these expressions. ' What ! shall my father yet 
appear before Caesar ! Has an angel from heaven told 
me so ! And must I believe what has been told me ! 
Well then, it shall be so ! It shall be so ! ' " 

" And now what shall I say ! When the affair of 
my father's agency after this came to a turning point 
in the court, it strangely miscarried ! All came to 
nothing ! Some of the Tories had so wrought upon 
the governor, that, though he had first moved this 
matter, and had given us both directions and prom- 
ises about it, yet he now (not without base unhand- 
someness) deferred it. The lieutenant-governor, who 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 441 

had formerly been for it, now (not without great 
ebullition of unaccountable prejudice and ingratitude) 
appeared, with all the little tricks imaginable, to con- 
found it. It had for all this been carried, had not 
some of the council been inconveniently called off and 
absent. But now the whole affair of the college was 
left unto the management of the Earl of Bellamont, 
so that all expectation of a voyage for my father 
unto England, on any such occasion, is utterly at an 
end." 1 

During all these years the legislature had been 
steadily passing resolutions requiring the president to 
go into residence ; and in 1698 they went so far as to 
vote him the liberal salary, for that age, of two hun- 
dred pounds, and appointed a committee to wait upon 
him. Judge Sewall describes the interview : — 

" Mr. President expostulated with Mr. Speaker 
. . . about the votes being alter 'd from 250 [£. ?]." 
..." We urg'd his going all we could ; I told him 
of his birth and education here ; that he look'd at 
work rather than wages, all met in desiring him, . . . 
Objected want of a house, bill for corporation not 
pass'd . . . must needs preach once every week, which 
he preferred before the gold and silver of the West- 
Indies. I told him would preach twice aday to the 
students. He said that [exposition] was nothing like 
preaching." 2 And in this the patriarch spoke the 
truth ; for if there was anything he loved more than 

^ History of Harvard, i. 484-486, App. x. 

* Sewall's Diary. Mass. Hist. CoL fifth series, v. 487. 



442 HARVARD COLLEGE. 

money it was the incense of adulation which steamed 
up to his nostrils from a great congregation. Of 
course he declined; and yet this importunity pained 
the good man, not because there was any conflict in 
his mind between his duty to a cause he held sacred 
and his own interest, but because it was "a thing con- 
trary to the faith marvellously wrought into my soul, 
that God will give me an opportunity to serve and 
glorify Christ in England, I set the day apart to cry 
to heaven about it." ^ 

There were limits, however, even to the patience of 
the Massachusetts Assembly with an orthodox divine ; 
and no sooner was the question of the agency decided 
by the appointment of Bellomont, than it addressed 
itself resolutely to the seemingly hopeless task of for- 
cing Dr. Mather to settle in Cambridge or resign his 
office. On the 10th of July, 1700, they voted him 
two hundred and twenty pounds a year, and they 
appointed a committee to obtain from him a categori- 
cal answer. This time he thought it prudent to feign 
compliance ; and after a " suitable place . . . for the 
reception and entertainment of the president " had 
been prepared at the public expense, he moved out of 
town and stayed till the 17th of October, when he 
went back to Boston, and wrote to tell Stoughton his 
health was suffering. His disingenuousness seems to 
have given Leverett the opportunity for which he had 
been waiting ; and his acting as chairman of a com- 
mittee appointed by the representatives suggests his 
1 History of Harvard, vi. 481, App. ix. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 443 

having forced the issue ; it was resolved that, should 
Mr. Mather be absent from the college, his duties 
should devolve upon Samuel Willard, the vice-pres- 
ident ; * and in March the committee apparently re- 
ported the president's house to be in good condition. 
Stimulated by this hint, the doctor went back to Cam- 
bridge and stayed a little more than three months, 
when he wrote a characteristic note to Stoughton, who 
was acting governor. " I promised the last General 
Court to take care of the college until the Commence- 
ment. Accordingly I have been residing in Cam- 
bridge these three months. I am determined (if the 
Lord will) to return to Boston the next week, and no 
more return to reside in Cambridge ; for it is not rea- 
sonable to desire me to be (as, out of respect to the 
public interest, I have been six months within this 
twelve) any longer absent from my family. ... I 
do therefore earnestly desire, that the General Court 
would . . . think of another president. ... It would 
be fatal to the interest of religion, if a person disaf- 
fected to the order of the Gospel, professed and prac- 
tised in these churches, should preside over this soci- 
ety. I know the General Assembly, out of their 
regard to the interest of Christ, will take care to pre- 
vent it." - Yet though he himself begged the legisla- 
ture to select his successor, in his inordinate vanity 
he did not dream of being taken at his word ; so 
when he was invited to meet both houses in the coun- 

^ History of Harvard, i. Ill ; Court Rec. vii. 172, 175. 
^ History of Harvard, i. 501, App. xvii. 



444 HARVARD COLLEGE. 

cil chamDer he explained with perfect cheerfulness 
how " he was now removed from Cambridge to Bos- 
ton, and . . . did not think fitt to continue his resi- 
dence there, . . . but, if the court thought fit to 
desire he should continue his care of the colledge as 
formerly, he would do so." ^ 

Increase Mather delighted to blazon himself as 
Christ's foremost champion in the land. He pre- 
dicted, and with reason, that should those who had 
been already designated succeed him at Harvard, it 
would be fatal to that cause to which his life was 
vowed. The alternative was presented of serving 
himself or God, and to him it seemed unreasonable 
of his friends to expect of him a choice. And yet 
when, as was his wont, he would describe himself 
from the pulpit, as a refulgent beacon blazing before 
New England, he would use such words as these : 
" Every . . . one of a publick spirit . . . will deny 
himseK as to his worldly interests, provided he may 
thereby promove the welfare of his people. . . . He 
will not only deny himself, but if called thereto, will 
encounter the greatest difficidties and dangers for the 
publicks sake." ^ 

The man had presumed too far; the world was 
wearying of him. On September 6, 1701, the gov- 
ernment was transferred to Samuel Willard, the vice- 
president, and Harvard was lost forever.^ 

^ Court Records, vii. 229. 

2 Sermon, The Publick Spirited Man, pp. 7, 9. 

* History of Harvard, i. 116. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 445 

No education is so baleful as the ecclesiastical, be- 
cause it breeds the belief in men that resistance to 
their wiU is not only a wrong to their country and 
themselves, but a sacrilege toward God. The Ma- 
thers were now to give an illustration of the degree to 
which the theocratic training debauched the mind ; 
and it is only necessary to observe that Samuel Sew- 
all, who tells the story, was educated for the ministry, 
and was perhaps as staunch a conservative as there 
was in the province. 

1701, " Oct^ 20. Mr. Cotton Mather came to Mr. 
Wilkius's shop, and there talked very sharply against 
me as if I had used his father worse than a neger ; 
spake so loud that people in the street might hear 
him. ... I had read in the morn Mr. Dod's saying ; 
Sanctified afflictions are good promotions. I found it 
now a cordial." 

" Oct^ 9. I sent Mr. Increase Mather a hanch of 
very good venison ; I hope in that I did not treat him 
as a negro." 

"Octob' 22. 1701. I, with Major Walley and 
Capt. Sam^ Checkly, speak with Mr. Cotton Mather 
at Mr. Wilkins's. ... I told him of his book of the 
Law of Kindness for the Tongue, whether this were 
correspondent with that. Whether correspondent 
with Christ's rule : 

" He said, having spoken to me before there was no 
need to speak to me again ; and so justified his revil- 
ing me behind my back. Charg'd the council with 
lying, hypocrisy, tricks, and I know not what all. I 



446 HARVARD COLLEGE. 

ask'd him if it were done with that meekness as it 
should ; Answer'd, Yes. Charg'd the council in gen- 
eral, and then shew'd my share, which was my speech 
in council ; viz. If Mr. Mather should goe to Cam- 
bridge again to reside there with a resolution not to 
read the Scriptures, and expound in the Hall: I fear 
the example of it will do more hurt than his going 
thither will doe good. This speech I owned. ... I 
ask'd him if I should supose he had done somthing 
amiss in his church as an officer ; whether it would 
be well for me to exclaim against him in the street 
for it." 

" Thorsday Oct- 23. Mr. Increase Mather said at 
Mr. Wilkins's, If I am a servant of Jesus Christ, 
some great judgment will fall on Capt. Sewall, or his 
family.'' ^ 

Had the patriarch been capable of a disinterested 
action, for the sake of those principles he professed to 
love, he would have stopped Willard's presidency, no 
matter at what personal cost, for he knew him to be 
no better than a liberal in disguise, and he had al- 
ready quarrelled bitterly with him in 1697 when he 
was trying to eject Leverett. Sewall noted on " Nov! 
20. . . . Mr. Willard told me of the falling out be- 
tween the president and him about chusing fellows 
last Monday. Mr. Mather has sent him word, he will 
never come to his house more till he give him satisfac- 
tion." 2 But they had in reality separated years be. 

1 Sewall's Diary. Mass. Hist. Coll. fifth series, vi. 43-45. 

2 Mass. Hist. Coll. fifth series, v. 464. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 447 

fore ; for when, in the witchcraft terror, Willard was 
cried out upon, and had to look a shameful death in 
the face, he learned to feel that the men who were 
willing to risk their lives to save him were by no 
means public enemies. And so, as the vice-president 
lived in Boston, the administration of the college was 
left very much to Leverett and the Brattles, who were 
presently reinstated. 

Joseph Dudley was the son of that old governor 
who wrote the verses about the cockatrice to be 
hatched by toleration, yet he inherited very little of 
his father's disposition. He was bred for the minis- 
try, and as the career did not attract him, he turned to 
politics, in which he made a brilliant opening. At first 
he was the hope of the high churchmen, but they after- 
ward learned to hate him with a rancor exceptional 
even toward their enemies. And he gave them only 
too good a handle against him, for he was gvnlty of 
the error of selling himself without reserve to the An- 
dros government. At the Revolution he suffered a 
long imprisonment, and afterward went to England, 
where he passed most of William's reign. There his 
ability soon brought him forward, he was made lieu- 
tenant-governor of the Isle of Wight, was returned to 
Parliament, and at last appointed governor by Queen 
Anne. Though Massachusetts owes a deeper debt to 
few of her chief magistrates, there are few who have 
found scantier praise at the hands of her historians. 
He was, it is true, an unscrupulous politician and 
courtier, but his mind was broad and vigorous, his 



448 HARVARD COLLEGE. 

policy wise and liberal, and at the moment of his 
power his influence was of inestimable value. 

Among his other gifts, he was endowed with infi- 
nite tact, and when working for his office he managed 
not only to conciliate the Mathers, but even to induce 
the son to write a letter in his favor ; and so when he 
arrived in 1702 they were both sedulous in their at- 
tentions in the expectation of controlling him. A 
month had not passed, however, before this ominous 
entry was made in the younger' s diary : — 

" June 16, 1T02. I received a visit from Govern- 
our Dudley. ... I said to him . . . I should be con- 
tent, I would approve it, . . . if any one should say 
to your excellency, ' By no means let any people have 
cause to say, that you take all your measures from the 
two Mr. Mathers.' By the same rule I may say with- 
out offence, ' By no means let any people say, that you 
go by no measures in your conduct, but Mr. Byfield's 
and Mr. Leverett's.' . . . The wretch went unto 
those men and told them, that I had advised him to 
be no ways advised by them ; and inflamed them into 
an implacable rage against me." ^ 

Leverett, on the contrary, now reached his zenith ; 
from the house he passed into the council and became 
one of Dudley's most trusted advisers. The Mathers 
were no match for these two men, and few routs have 
been more disastrous than theirs. Lord Bellomont's 
sudden death had put an end to all hope of obtaining 
a charter by compromise with England, and no fur. 
1 Mciss. Hist. Coll. first series, iii. 137. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 449 

ther action had been taken, when, on September 12, 
1707, Willard died. On the 28th of October the fel- 
lows met and chose John Leverett president of Har- 
vard College ; and then came a demonstration which 
proved not only Increase Mather's prescience, when 
he foretold how a liberal university would kill a dis- 
ciplined church, but which shows the mighty influence 
a devoted teacher can have upon his age. Thirty- 
nine ministers addressed Governor Dudley thus : — 

" We have lately, with great joy, understood the 
great and early care that our brethren, who have the 
present care and oversight of the college at Cam- 
bridge, have taken, ... by their unanimous choice 
of Mr. John Leverett, ... to be the president . . . 
Your Excellency personally knows Mr. Leverett so 
well, that we shall say the less of him. However, we 
cannot but give this testimony of our great affection 
to and esteem for him ; that we are abundantly satis- 
fied ... of his religion, learning, and other excellent 
accomplishments for that eminent service, a long ex- 
perience of which we had while he was senior fellow 
of that house ; for that, under the wise and faithful 
government of him, and the Rev. Mr. Brattle, of 
Cambridge, the greatest part of the now rising minis- 
try in New England were happily educated ; and we 
hope and promise ourselves, through the blessing of 
the God of our fathers, to see religion and learning 
thrive and flourish in that society, under Mr. Lever- 
ett's wise conduct and influence, as much as ever yet 
it hath done." ^ 

^ History of Harvard, i. 504, App. xx. 



450 HARVARD COLLEGE. 

His salary was only one hundred and fifty pounds 
a year ; but the man worked for love of a great cause, 
and did not stop to haggle. Nor were he and Dud- 
ley of the temper to leave a task half done. Un- 
doubtedly at the governor's instigation, a resolve was 
introduced into the Assembly reviving the Act of 1650 
by which the university had been incorporated, and it 
is by the sanction of this lawless and masterly feat of 
statesmanship that Harvard has been administered for 
almost two hundred years. 

Sewall tells how Dudley went out in state to inau- 
gurate his friend. " The gov'' prepar'd a Latin speech 
for instalment of the president. Then took the presi- 
dent by the hand and led him down into the hall ; . . . 
The gov'' sat with his back against a noble fire. . . . 
Then the gov"" read his speech . . . and mov'd the 
books in token of their delivery. Then president 
made a short Latin speech, importing the difficulties 
discouraging, and yet that he did accept : . . . Clos'd 
with the hymn to the Trinity. Had a very good diner 
upon 3 or 4 tables. . . . Got home very well. Lmts 
Deor 1 

Nor did Dudley fail to provide the new executive 
with fit support. By the old law he had revived the 
corporation was reduced to seven ; of this board Lev- 
erett himself was one, and on the day he took his office 
both the Brattles and Peraberton were also appointed. 
And more than this, when, a few years later, Pem- 
berton died, the arch-rebel, Benjamin Colman, was 

1 Mass. Hist. Coll. fifth series, vi. 209. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 451 

chosen in his place. The liberal triumph was complete, 
and in looking back through the vista of the past, 
there are few pages of our history more strongly 
stamped with the native energy of the New Englan(? 
mind than this brilliant capture of Harvard, by whict 
the ancient cradle of bigotry and superstition wa& 
made the home of American liberal thought. As foi 
the Mathers, when they found themselves beaten in 
fair fight, they conceived a revenge so dastardly that 
Pemberton declared with much emotion he would hum- 
ble them, were he governor, though it cost him his 
head. Being unable longer to withstand Dudley by 
honorable means, they tried to blast him by charging 
him with felony. Their letters are too long to be 
reproduced in full ; but their purport may be guessed 
by the extracts given, and to this day they remain 
choice gems of theocratic morality. 

Sir, That I have had a singular respect for you, the 
Lord knows ; but that since your arrival to the gov- 
ernment, my charitable expectations have been greatly 
disappointed, I may not deny. . . . 

1st. I am afraid you cannot clear yourself from the 
guilt of bribery and unrighteousness. . . . 

2d. I am afraid that you have not been true to the 
interest of your country, as God (considering his mar- 
vellous dispensations towards you) and his people 
have expected from you. . . . 

3d. I am afraid that you cannot clear yourself from 
the guilt of much hypocrisy and falseness in the affair 
of the college. . . . 



452 HARVARD COLLEGE. 

4th. I am afraid that the guilt of innocent blood is 
still crying in the ears of the Lord against you. I 
mean the blood of Leister and Milburn. My Lord 
Bellamont said to me, that he was one of the commit- 
tee of Parliament who examined the matter ; and that 
those men were not only murdered, but barbarously 
murdered. . . . 

5th. I am afraid that the Lord is offended with you, 
in that you ordinarily forsake the worship of God in 
the holy church to which you are related, in the after- 
noon on the Lord's day, and after the publick exercise, 
spend the whole time with some persons reputed very 
ungodly men. I am sure your father did not so. . . . 
Would you choose to be with them or such as they are 
in another world, unto which you are hastening? . . . 
I am under pressures of conscience to bear a publick 
testimony without respect of persons. ... I trust in 
Christ that when I am gone, I shall obtain a good 
report of my having been faithful before him. To his 
mercy I commend you, and remain in him, 
Yours to serve, 

I. Mather.1 

Boston, January 20, 1707-8. 
To the Govemour. 

Boston, Jan. 20, 1707-8. 

Sir, There have appeared such things in your 

conduct, that a just concern for the welfare of your 

excellency seems to render it necessary, that you 

should be faithfully advised of them. . . . You will 

1 Mass. Hist. Coll. first series, iii. 126. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 453 

give me leave to write nothing, but in a style, whereof 
an ignorant mob, to whom (as well as the General 
Assembly) you think fit to communicate what frag- 
ments you please of my letters, must be competent 
judges. I must proceed accordingly. ... I weakly 
believed that the wicked and horrid things done be- 
fore the righteous Revolution, had been heartily re- 
pented of ; and that the rueful business at New York, 
which many illustrious persons . . . called a barbarous 
murder, . . . had been considered with such a repent- 
ance, as might save you and your family from any fur- 
ther storms of heaven for the revenging of it. . . . Sir, 
your snare has been that thing, the hatred whereof is 
most expressly required of the ruler, namely COVET- 
OUSNESS. When a jjovernour shall make his jjovern- 
raent more an engine to enrich himself, than to he- 
friend his country, and shall by the unhallowed hun- 
ger of riches be prevailed withal to do many wrong, 
base, dishonourable things ; it is a covetousness which 
will shut out from the kingdom of heaven ; and some- 
times the loss of a government on earth also is the 
punishment of it. . . . The main channel of that cov- 
etousness has been the reign of bribery, which you, 
sir, have set up in the land, where it was hardly 
known, till yon brought it in fashion. . . . And there 
lie affidavits before the queen and council, which affirm 
that you have been guilty of it in very many instances. 
I do also know that you have, . . . 

Sir, you are sensible that there is a judgment to 
come, wherein the glorious Lord will demand, how far 



454 HARVARD COLLEGE. 

you aimed at serving him in your government ; . . . how 
far you did in your government encourage those that 
had most of his image upon them, or place your eyes 
on the wicked of the land. Your age and health, as 
well as other circumstances, greatly invite you, sir, to 
entertain awful thoughts of this matter, and solicit 
the divine mercy through the only sacrifice. . . . Yet 
if the troubles you brought on yourself should pro- 
cure your abdication and recess unto a more private 
condition, and your present parasites forsake you, as 
you may he sure they will, I should think it my duty 
to do you all the good offices imaginable. 

Finally, I can forgive and forget injuries ; and I 
hope I am somewhat ready for sunset ; the more for 
having discharged the duty of this letter. . . . 
Your humble and faithful servant, 

Cotton Mather.^ 

But these venomous priests had tried their fangs 
upon a resolute and an able man. Dudley shook 
them off like vermin. 

Gentlemen, Yours of the 20th instant I received ; 
and the contents, both as to the matter and manner, 
astonish me to the last degree. I must think you 
have extremely forgot your own station, as well as my 
character ; otherwise it had been impossible to have 
made such an open breach upon all the laws of de- 
cency, honour, justice, and Christianity, as you have 
^ Mass, Hist. Coll. first series, iii. 128. 



HARVARD COLLEGE. 455 

done in treating me with an air of superiority and 
contempt, which would have been greatly culpable 
towards a Christian of the lowest order, and is insuf- 
ferably rude toward one whom divine Providence has 
honoured with the character of your governour, . . . 

Why, gentlemen, have you been so long silent? and 
suffered sin to lie upon me years after years? You 
cannot pretend any new information as to the main 
of your charge ; for you have privately given your 
tongues a loose upon these heads, I am well assured, 
when you thought you could serve yourselves by ex- 
posing me. Surely murder, robberies, and other such 
flaming immoralities were as reprovable then as 
now. . . . 

Really, gentlemen, conscience and religion are 
things too solemn, venerable, or sacred, to be played 
w'ith, or made a covering for actions so disagreeable to 
the gospel, as these your endeavours to expose me 
and my most faithful services to contempt ; nay, to 
unhinge the government. . . . 

I desire you will keep your station, and let fifty or 
sixty good ministers, your equals in the province, have 
a share in the government of the college, and advise 
thereabouts as well as yourselves, and I hope all will 
be well. . . . 

I am your humble servant, 

J. Dudley. 
To the Reverend Doctors Mathers.^ 

^ Mass. Hist. Coll. first series, iii. 135. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE LAWYERS. 

In the age of sacred caste the priest is likewise the 
law-maker and the judge, and as succeeding genera- 
tions of ecclesiastics slowly spin the intricate web of 
their ceremonial code, they fail not to teach the peo- 
ple that their holy ordinances were received of yore 
from divine lips by some great prophet. This process 
is beautifully exemplified in the Old Testament : 
though the complicated ritualism of Leviticus was 
always reverently attributed to Moses, it was evi- 
dently the work of a much later period ; for the pres- 
ent purpose, however, its date is immaterial, it suf- 
fices to follow the account the scribes thought fit to 
give in Kings. 

Long after the time of Solomon, Josiah one day 
sent to inquire about some repairs then being made 
at the Temple, when suddenly, " Hilkiah the high 
priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the 
book of the law in the house of the Lord." And he 
gave the book to Shaphan. 

" And it came to pass, when the king had heard the 
words of the book ... he rent his clothes." And he 
was greatly alarmed for fear of the wrath of the Lord, 
because their fathers had not hearkened unto the 



THE LAWYERS. 457 

words of this book ; as indeed it was impossible they 
should, since they knew nothing about it. So, to find 
out what was best to be done, he sent Hilkiah and 
others to Iluldah the prophetess, who told them that 
the wrath of the Lord was indeed kindled, and he 
would bring evil unto the land ; but, because Josiah's 
heart had been tender, and he had humbled himself, 
and rent his clothes, and wept when he had heard 
what was spoken, he should be gathered into his grave 
in peace, and his eyes should not see the evil.^ 

Such is an example of the process whereby a com- 
pilation of canonical statutes is brought into practical 
operation by adroitly working upon the superstitious 
fears of the civil magistrate ; at an earlier period the 
priests administer justice in person. 

Eli judged Israel forty years, and Samuel went on 
circuit all the days of his life ; "■ and he went from 
year to year in circuit to Bethel, and Gilgal, and 
Mizpeh, and judged Israel in all those places." ^ But, 
sooner or later, the time must come when a soldier is 
absolutely necessary, both to fight foreign enemies 
and to enforce obedience at home ; and then some 
chief is set up whom the clergy think they can con- 
trol : thus Samuel anointed Saul to be captain over 
the Lord's inheritance.^ So long as the king is sub- 
missive to authority all goes well, but any insubordi- 
nation is promptly punished ; and this was the fate of 
Saul. On one occasion, when he was in difficulty and 
Samuel happened to be away, he was so rash as to 

* 2 Kings xxii. ^ 1 Samuel iv., vii. ^ 1 Samuel x. 



458 THE LAWYERS. 

sacrifice a burnt offering himself; his presumption 
offended the prophet, who forthwith declared that his 
kingdom should not continue.^ After this the rela- 
tions between them went from bad to worse, and it 
was not long before the priest began to intrigue with 
David, whom he presently anointed.^ The end of it 
was that Saul was defeated in battle, as Samuel's 
ghost foretold, for not obeying " the voice of the 
Lord ; " and after a struggle between the houses of 
Saul and David, all the elders of Israel went to 
Hebron, where David made a league with them, and 
in return they anointed him king.^ 

Thenceforward, or from the moment when a layman 
assumed control of the temporal power, the Jewish 
chronicles teem with the sins and the disasters of those 
rulers who did not walk in the way of their fathers, 
or who, in other words, were restive under ecclesiasti- 
cal dictation. 

So long as this period lasts, during which the sov- 
ereign is forced to obey the behests of the priesthood, 
an arbitrary despotism is inevitable ; nor can the 
foundation of equal justice and civil liberty be laid 
until first the military, and then the legal profession, 
has become distinct and emancipated from clerical 
control, and jurisprudence has grown into the recog- 
nized calling of a special class. 

These phenomena tend to explain the peculiar and 
original direction taken by legal thought in Massa- 
chusetts, for they throw light upon the influences un- 

^ 1 Samuel xiii. 2 l(iem, xvi. ^ 2 Samuel v. 



THE LAWYERS. 459 

der which her first generation of lawyers grew up, 
whose destiny it was to impress upon her institutions 
the form they have ever since retained. 

The traditions inherited from the theocracy were 
vicious in the extreme. For ten years after the settle- 
ment the clergy and their aristocratic allies stubbornly 
refused either to recognize the common law or to en- 
act a code ; and when at length further resistance to 
the demands of the freemen was impossible, the Rev. 
Nathaniel Ward drew up " The Body of Liberties," 
which, though it perhaps sufficiently defined civil obli- 
gations, contained this extraordinary provision con- 
cerning crimes : — 

" No mans life shall be taken away, no mans 
honour or good name shall be stayned, no mans per- 
son shall be arested, restrayned, banished, dismem- 
bred, nor any wayes punished, . . . unlesse it be by 
virtue or equitie of some expresse law of the country 
waranting the same, ... or in case of the defect of 
a law in any parteculer case by the word of God. 
And in capitall cases, or in cases concerning dismem- 
bring or banishment according to that word to be 
judged by the Generall Court." ^ 

The whole of the subtle policy, whereof this legis- 
lation forms a part, well repays attentive study. The 
relation of the church to the state was not unlike that 
of Samuel toward Saul, for no public man could with- 
stand its attack, as was demonstrated by the fate of 
Vane. Much of the story has been told already in 
1 Mass. Hist. Coll. third series, viii. 216. 



460 THE LA WYERS. 

describing the process whereby the clergy acquired a 
substantial ascendency over the executive and legisla- 
ture, through their command of the constituencies, 
which it was the labor of their lives to fill with loyal 
retainers. Nothing therefore remains to be done but 
to trace the means they employed to invest their order 
with judicial attributes. 

From the outset lawyers were excluded from prac- 
tice, so the magistrates were nothing but common 
politicians who were nominated by the priests ; thus 
the bench was not only filled with trusty partisans 
without professional training or instincts, but also, 
as they were elected annually, they were practically 
removable at pleasure should they by any chance 
rebel. Upon these points there is abundant evidence : 
" The government was first by way of charter, which 
was chiefly managed by the preachers, who by their 
power with the people made all the magistrates & 
kept them so intirely under obedience, that they durst 
not act without them. Soe that whensoever anything 
strange or unusuall was brought before them, they 
would not determine the matter without consulting 
the preachers, for should any bee soe sturdy as to pre- 
sume to act of himself without takeing advice & di- 
rections, he might bee sure of it, his magistracy ended 
with the year. He could bee noe magistrate for them, 
that was not approved and recommended from the 
pulpit, & he could expect little recommendation who 
was not the preacher's most humble servant. Soe 
they who treated, caressed & presented the preachers 



THE LAWYERS. 461 

most, were the rulers & magistrates among the peo- 
ple." 1 

From the decisions of such a judiciary the only 
appeal lay to a popular assembly, which could always 
be manipulated. Obviously, ecclesiastical supervision 
over the ordinary course of litigation was amply pro- 
vided for. The adjudication of the more important 
controversies was reserved; for it was expressly en- 
acted that doubtful questions and the higher crimes 
should be judged according to the Word of God. 
This master-stroke resembled Hilkiah's when he im- 
posed his book on Josiah; for on no point of disci- 
pline were the ministers so emphatic as on the sacred 
and absolute nature of their prerogative to interpret 
the Scriptures ; nor did they fail to impress upon the 
people that it was a sin akin to sacrilege for the laity 
to dispute their exposition of the Bible. 

The deduction to be drawn from these premises is 
plain. The assembled elders, acting in their advisory 
capacity, constituted a supreme tribunal of last resort, 
wholly superior to carnal precedent, and capable of 
evolving whatsoever decrees they deemed expedient 
from the depths of their consciousness.^ The result 
exemplifies the precision with which a cause operating 
upon the human mind is followed by its consequence ; 
and the action of this resistless force is painfully 
apparent in every state prosecution under the Puri- 

1 An Account of the Colonies, etc., Lambeth MSS. Perry's 
Historical Collections, iii. 48. 

2 See Gorton's case, Winthrop, ii. 146. 



462 THE LAWYERS. 

tan Commonwealth, from Wheelwright's to Margaret 
Brewster's. The absorption of sacerdotal, political, 
and juridical functions by a single class produces an 
arbitrary despotism ; and before judges greedy of 
earthly dominion, flushed by the sense of power, unre- 
strained by rules of law or evidence, and unopposed 
by a resolute and courageous bar, ti-ials must become 
little more than conventional forms, precursors of pre- 
determined punishments. 

After a period of about half a century these social 
conditions underwent radical change, but traditions 
remained that deeply affected the subsequent devel- 
opment of the people, and produced a marked bent of 
thought in the lawyers who afterward wrote the Con- 
stitution. 

At the accession of William III. great progress had 
been made in the science of colonial government ; 
charters had been granted to Connecticut and Rhode 
Island in 1662 and 1663, which, except in the survival 
of the ancient and meaningless jargon of incorpora- 
tion, had a decidedly modern form. By these regidar 
local representative governments were established with 
full power of legislation, save in so far as limited by 
clauses requiring conformity with the law of England ; 
and they served their purpose well, for both were kept 
in force many years after the Bevolution, Rhode Isl- 
and's not having been superseded until 1843. 

The stubborn selfishness of the theocracy led to the 
adoption of a less liberal policy toward Massachusetts. 
The nomination of the executive officers was retained 



THE LAWYERS. 4G3 

by the crown, and the governor was given very sub- 
stantial means of maintaining his authority ; he coukl 
reject the councillors elected hy the Assembly ; he ap- 
pointed the judges and sheriffs with the advice of this 
body, whose composition he could thus in a measure 
control ; he had a veto, and was commander-in-chief. 
Appeals to the king in council were also provided 
for in personal actions where the matter in difference 
exceeded three hundred pounds. 

On the other hand, the legislature made all appro- 
priations, including those for the salaries of the gov- 
ernor and judges, and was only limited in its cajjacity 
to enact statutes by the clause invariably inserted in 
these patents. 

This, therefore, is the precise moment when the 
modern theory of constitutional limitations first ap- 
pears defined ; distinct from the ancient corporate 
precedents. By a combination of circumstances also, 
a sufficient sanction for the written law happened to 
be provided, thus making the conception complete, 
for the tribunal of last resort was an English court 
sustained by ample physical force ; nevertheless the 
great principle of coordinate departments of govern- 
ment was not yet understood, and substantial relief 
against legislative usurpation had to be sought in a 
foreign jurisdiction. To lawyers of our own time it 
is self-evident that the restrictions of an organic code 
must be futile unless they are upheld by a judiciary 
not only secure in tenure and pay, but removed as far 
as may be from partisan passions. This truth, how- 



464 THE LAWYERS. 

ever, remained to be discovered amid the abuses of 
the eighteenth century, for the position of the pro- 
vincial bench was unsatisfactory in the last degree. 
The justices held their commissions at the king's 
pleasure, but their salaries were at the mercy of the 
deputies ; they were therefore subject to the caprice 
of antagonistic masters. Nor was this the worst, for 
the charter did not isolate the judicial office. Under 
the theocracy the policy of the clergy had been to sup- 
press the study of law in order to concentrate their 
own power ; hence no training was thought necessary 
for the magistrate, no politician was considered in- 
competent to fill the judgment-seat because of igno- 
rance of his duty, and the office-hunter, having got 
his place by influence, was deemed at liberty to 
use it as a point of vantage, from whence to prose- 
cute his chosen career. For example, the first chief 
justice was Stoughton, who was appointed by Phips, 
probably at the instigation of Increase Mather. As 
he was bred for the church, he could have had no 
knowledge to recommend him, and his peculiar quali- 
fications were doubtless family connections and a nar- 
row and bigoted mind ; he was also lieutenant - gov- 
ernor, a member of the council, and part of the time 
commander-in-chief. 

Thomas Danforth was the senior associate, who is 
described by Sewall as " a very good husbandman, 
and a very good Christian, and a good councillor ; " 
but his reputation as a jurist rested upon a spotless 
record, he having been the most uncompromising of 
the high church managers. 



THE LAWYERS. 465 

Wait Winthrop was a soldier, and was not only in 
the council, but so active in public life tbat years 
afterward, while on the bench, he was set up as a can- 
didate for governor in opposition to Dudley. 

John Richards was a merchant, who had been sent 
to England as agent in 1681, just when the troubles 
came to a crisis ; but the labors by which he won the 
ermine seem plain enough, for he was bail for Increase 
Mather when sued by Randolph, and was appointed 
by Phips. Samuel Sewall was brought up to preach, 
took to politics on the conservative side, and was reg- 
ularly chosen to the council. 

This motley crew, who formed the first superior 
court, had but one trait in common : they belonged to 
the clique who controlled the patronage ; and as it be- 
gan so it continued to the end, for Hutchinson, the 
last chief justice but one, was a merchant ; yet he was 
also probate judge, lieutenant-governor, councillor, and 
leader of the Tories. In so intelligent a community 
such prostitution of the judicial office would have been 
impossible but for the pernicious tradition that the 
civil magistrate needed no special training to perform 
his duty, and was to take his law from those who ex- 
pounded the Word of God. 

And there was another inheritance, if possible, more 
baleful still. The legislature, under the Puritan 
Commonwealth, had been the court of last resort, and 
it was by no means forward to abandon its preroga- 
tive. It was consequently always ready to listen to 
the complaints of suitors who thought themselves 



466 THE LAWYERS. 

aggrieved by the decisions of the regular tribunals, 
and it was fond of altering the course of justice 
to make it conform to what the members were 
pleased to call equity. This abuse finally took such 
proportions that Hutchinson remonstrated vigorously 
in a speech to the houses in 1772. 

" Much time is usually spent ... in considering 
petitions for new trials at law, for leave to sell the 
real estates of persons deceased, by their executors, 
or administrators, and the real estates of minors, by 
their guardians. All such private business is prop- 
erly cognizable by the established judicatories. . . . 
A legislative body ... is extremely improper for 
such decisions. The polity of the English govern- 
ment seldom admits of the exercise of this executive 
and judiciary power by the legislature, and I know of 
nothing special in the government of this province, to 
give countenance to it." ^ 

The disposition to interfere in what did not con- 
cern them was probably aggravated by the presence 
of judicial politicians in the popular assemblies, who 
seem to have been unable to resist the temptation of 
intriguing to procure legislation to affect the litigation 
before them. But the simplest way to illustrate the 
working of the system in all its bearings will be to 
give a history of a celebrated case finally taken on ap- 
peal to the Privy Council. The cause arose in Con- 
necticut, it is true, but the social condition of the two 
colonies was so similar as to make this circumstance 
immaterial. 

1 Mass, State Papers, 1765-1775, p. 314. 



THE LAWYERS. 467 

Walt Winthrop,^ grandson of the first John Win- 
throp, died intestate in 1717, leaving two children, 
John, of New London, and Anne, wife of Thomas 
Lechmere, of Boston. The father intended his son 
should take the land according to the family tradi- 
tion, and in pursuance of this purpose he put him in 
actual possession of the Connecticut property in 1711 ; 
but he neglected to make a will. 

By the common law of England real estate de- 
scended to the eldest son of him who was last seised ; 
but in 1699 the Assembly had passed a statute of dis- 
tribution, copied from a Massachusetts act, which 
directed the probate court, after payment of debts, 
to make a " distribution of . . . all the residue . . . 
of the real and personal estate by equal portions to 
and among the children . . . except the eldest son 
. . . who shall have two shares." 

Here, then, at the threshold, the constitutional 
question had to be met, as to whether the colonial en- 
actment was not in conflict with the restriction in the 
charter, and therefore void. Winthrop took out let- 
ters of administration, and Lechmere became one of 
the sureties on his bond. There was no disagree- 
ment about the personalty, but the son's claim to the 
land was disputed, though suit was not brought against 
him till 1723. 

The litigation began in Boston, but was soon trans- 
ferred to New London, where, in July, 1724, Lech- 

1 This report of Winthrop v. Lechmere is taken from a MS. 
brief in the possession of Hon. R. C. Winthrop. 



468 THE LAWYERS. 

mere petitioned for an account. Winthrop forthwith 
exhibited an inventory of the chattels, and moved that 
it should be accepted as final ; but the judge of pro- 
bate declined so to rule. Then Lechmere prayed for 
leave to sue on the bond in the name of the judge. 
His prayer was granted, and he presently began no 
less than six actions in different forms. 

Much time was consumed in disposing of technical- 
ities, but at length two test cases were brought before 
the superior court. One, being in substance an action 
on the bond, was tried on the general issue, and 
the verdict was for the defendant. The other was a 
writ of partition, wherein Anne was described as co- 
heir with her brother. It was argued on demurrer to 
the declaration, and the defendant again prevailed. 

Thus, so far as judicial decision could determine 
private rights to property, Winthrop had established 
his title ; but he represented the unpopular side in the 
controversy, and his troubles were just beginning. 
Christopher Christophers was the judge of probate, he 
was also a justice of the superior court, and a member 
of the Assembly, of which body the plaintiff's counsel 
was speaker. In April, 1725, when Lechmere had 
finally exhausted his legal remedies, he addressed a 
petition to the legislature, where he had this strong 
support, and which was not to meet till May, stating 
the impossibility of obtaining relief by ordinary means, 
and asking to have one of the judgments set aside 
and a new trial ordered, in such form as to enable him 
to maintain his writ of partition, notwithstanding \hp 



THE LAWYERS. 469 

solemn decision against him by the court of last resort. 
The defendant in vain protested that no error was 
alleged, no new evidence produced, nor any matter of 
equity advanced which might justify interference: the 
Assembly had determined to sustain the statute of 
distributions, and it accordingly resolved that in cases 
of this description relief ought to be given in probate 
by means of a new grant of administration, to be ex- 
ecuted according to the terms of the act. 

Winthrop was much alarmed, and with reason, for 
he saw at once the intention of the legislature was to 
induce the judges to assume an unprecedented juris- 
diction; he therefore again offered his account, which 
Christophers rejected, and he appealed from the de- 
cision. Lechmere also applied for administration on 
behalf of his wife ; and upon his prayer being denied, 
pending a final disposition of Winthrop's cause, he too 
went up. In March, 1725-6, final judgment was ren- 
dered, the judges holding that both real and personal 
property should be inventoried. Winthrop thereupon 
entered his appeal to the Privy Council, whose juris- 
diction was peremptorily denied. 

From what afterward took place, the inference is 
that Christophers shrank from assuming alone so great 
a responsibility as now devolved upon him, and per- 
suaded his brethren to share it with him ; for the 
superior court proceeded to issue letters of administra- 
tion to Lechmere, and took his bond, drawn to them- 
selves personally, for the faithful performance of his 
trust. This was a most high-handed usurpation, for 



470 THE LAWYERS. 

the function of the higher tribunal in these matters 
was altogether appellate, it having nothing to do with 
such executive business as taking bonds, which was 
the province of the judge of probate. 

However this may have been, progress was thence- 
forward rapid. In April Lechmere produced a sched- 
ule of debts, which have at this day a somewhat sus- 
picious look, and when they were allowed, he peti- 
tioned the legislature for leave to sell land to pay 
them. Winthrop apjjeared and presented a remon- 
strance, which " the Assembly, observing the common 
course of justice, and the law of the colony being by 
application to the said Assembly, when the judgments 
of the superior courts are grievous to any person . . . 
dismissed," and immediately passed an act authorizing 
the sale, and making the administrators' deed good to 
convey a title. 

Then Winthrop was so incautious as to make a final 
effort : he filed a protest and caution against any illegal 
interference with his property pending his appeal, de- 
claring the action already taken to be contrary to the 
common and statute law of England, and to the tenor 
of the charter. 

The Assembly being of the opinion that this protest 
" had in it a great show of contempt," caused Win- 
throp to be arrested and brought to the bar ; there he 
not only defended his representations as reasonable, 
but avowed his determination to lay all these proceed- 
ings before the king in council. " This was treated as 
an insolent contemptuous and disorderly behaviour" 



THE LAWYERS. 471 

in the prisoner, " as declaring himself coram non ju- 
dice, and putting himself on a par with them, and im- 
peaching their authoritys and the charter ; and his said 
protest was declared to be full of reflections, and to 
terrific so far as in him lay all the authorities estab- 
lished by the charter." So they imprisoned him three 
dajs and fined him twenty pounds for his contemptu- 
ous words. 

This leading case was afterward elaborately argued 
in London, and judgment was entered for Winthrop, 
upon the ground that the statute of distribution was 
in conflict with the charter and therefore void ; but 
as Connecticut resolutely refused to abandon its own 
policy, the utmost confusion prevailed for seventeen 
years regarding the settlement of estates. During all 
this time the local government made unremitting ef- 
forts to obtain relief, and seems to have used pecuni- 
ary as well as legal arguments to effect its purpose ; at 
all events, it finally secured a majority in the Privy 
Council, who reversed Winthrop v. Lechmere,in Clark 
V. Tousey. The same question was raised in Massa- 
chusetts in 1737, in Phillips v. Savage, but enough in- 
fluence was brought to bear to prevent an adverse de- 
cision.^ A possible distinction between the two cases 
also lay in the fact that the Massachusetts act had re- 
ceived the royal assent. 

The history of this litigation is interesting, not only 
as illustrating the defects in provincial justice, but as 

1 Conn. Coll. Rec. vii. 191, note ; Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. 
18G0-62, pp. 64-80, 165-171. 



^ 



472 THE LAWYERS. 

showing the process by which the conception of con- 
stitutional limitations became rooted in the minds of 
the first generation of lawyers ; and in point of fact, 
they were so thoroughly impregnated with the theory 
as to incline to carry it to unwarrantable lengths. 
For example, so justly eminent a counsel as James 
Otis, in his great argument on the Writs of Assist- 
ance in 1761, solemnly maintained the utterly unten- 
able proposition that an act of Parliament " against 
the Constitution is void : an act against natural equity 
is void : and if an act of Parliament should be made, 
in the very words of this petition, it would be void." ^ 
While so sound a man, otherwise, as John Adams wrote, 
in 1776, to Mr. Justice Gushing : " You have my 
hearty concurrence in telling the jury the nullity of 
acts of Parliament. ... I am determined to die of 
that opinion, let the jus gladii say what it will." ^ 

On looking back at Massachusetts as she was in the 
year 1700, permeated with the evil theocratic tradi- 
tions, without judges, teachers, or books, the mind 
can hardly fail to be impressed with the unconquer- 
able energy which produced great jurists from such a 
soil ; and yet in 1725 Jeremiah Gridley graduated from 
Harvard, who may fairly be said to have been the 
progenitor of a famous race ; for long before the Rev- 
olution, men like Prat, Otis, and John Adams could 
well have held their own before any court of Common 
Law that ever sat. Such powerful counsel naturally 

^ Quincy's Reports, p. 474. 
2 Works of J. Adams, ix. 390. 



THE LAWYERS. 473 

felt a contempt for the ignorant politicians who for 
the most part presided over them, which they took 
little pains to hide. Ruggles one day had an aged 
female witness who could find no chair and com- 
plained to him of exhaustion. He told her to go and 
sit on the bench. His honor, in some irritation, call- 
ing him to account, he replied : "I really thought 
that place was made for old women." Hutchinson 
says of himself : " It was an eyesore to some of the 
bar to have a person at the head of the law who had 
not been bred to it." But he explains with perfect 
simplicity how his occupation as chief justice "en- 
gaged his attention, and he applied his intervals to 
reading the law." ^ 

The British supremacy closed with the evacuation 
of Boston, and the colony then became an independ- 
ent state; yet in that singularly homogeneous com- 
munity, which had always been taught to regard their 
royal patents as the bulwark of their liberties, no one 
seems to have seriously thought it possible to dispense 
with a written instrument to serve as the basis of the 
social organization. Accordingly, in 1779, the legisla- 
ture called a convention to draft a Constitution ; and it 
was the good fortune of the lawyers, who were chosen 
as delegates, to have an opportunity, not only to cor- 
rect those abuses from which the administration of 
justice had so long suffered, but to carry into practical 
operation their favorite theory, of the limitation of 
legislative power by the intervention of the courts. 
^ Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, p. 66. 



474 THE LAWYERS. 

The course pursued was precisely what might have 
been predicted of the representatives of a progressive 
yet sagacious people. Taking the old charter as the 
foundation whereon to build, they made only such al- 
terations as their past experience had shown them to 
be necessary; they adopted no fanciful schemes, nor 
did they lightly depart from a system with which they 
were acquainted; and their almost servile fidelity to 
their precedent, wherever it could be followed, is shown 
by the following extracts relating to the legislative 
and executive departments. 

CHARTER. 

And we doe further for vs our heires and successors 
give and grant to the said governor and the Great and 
Generall Court or Assembly of our said province or 
territory for the time being full power and authority 
from time to time to make ordaine and establish all 
manner of wholsome and reasonable orders laws stat- 
utes and ordinances directions and instructions either 
with penalties or without (soe as the same be not re- 
pugnant or contrary to the lawes of this our realme of 
England) as they shall judge to be for the good and 
welfare of our said province or territory and for the 
gouernment and ordering thereof and of the people 
inhabiting or who shall inhabit the same and for the 
necessary support and defence of the government 
thereof. 



THE LAWYERS. 475 

CONSTITUTION. 

And further, full power and authority are hereby 
given and granted to the said General Court, from 
time to time, to make, ordain, and establish, all man- 
ner of wholesome and reasonable orders, laws, statutes, 
and ordinances, directions and instructions, either with 
penalties or without ; so as the same be not repugnant 
or contrary to this constitution, as they shall judge to 
be for the good and welfare of this commonwealth, 
and for the government and ordering thereof, and of 
the subjects of the same, and for the necessary support 
and defence of the government thereof. 

CHARTER. 

The governour of our said province for the time be- 
ing shall have authority from time to time at his dis- 
cretion to assemble and call together the councillors or 
assistants of our said province for the time being and 
that the said governour with the said assistants or 
councillors or seaven of them at the least shall and 
may from time to time hold and keep a councill for 
the ordering and directing the affaires of our said 

province. 

CONSTITUTION. 

The governour shall have authority, from time to 
time at his discretion, to assemble and call together 
the councillors of this commonwealth for the time be- 
ing ; and the governour, with the said councillors, or 
five of them at least, shall, and may, from time to 



476 THE LAWYERS. 

time, hold and keep a council, for the ordering and 
directing the affairs of the commonwealth, agreeably 
to the constitution and the laws of the land. 

The clause concerning the council is curious as an 
instance of the survival of an antiquated form. In 
the province the body had a use, for it was a regular 
upper chamber ; but when, in 1779, a senate was 
added, it became an anomalous and meaningless third 
house ; yet it is still regularly elected, though its in- 
utility is obvious. So long ago as 1814 John Adams 
had become very tired of it ; he then wrote : " This 
constitution, which existed in my handwriting, made 
the governor annually elective, gave him the executive 
power, shackled with a council, that I now wish was 
annihilated." ^ 

On the other hand, the changes made are even more 
interesting, as an example of the evolution of institu- 
tions. The antique document was simplified by an 
orderly arrangement and division into sections ; the 
obsolete jargon of incorporation was eliminated, which 
had come down from the mediaeval guilds ; in the dis- 
pute with England the want of a bill of rights had 
been severely felt, so one was prefixed ; and then the 
convention, probably out of regard to symmetry, 
blotted their otherwise admirable work by creating 
an unnecessary senate. But viewed as a whole, the 
grand original conception contained in this instru- 
ment, making it loom up a landmark in historj^ is the 
1 Works of J. Adams, vi. 465. 



THE LAWYERS. 477 

theory of the three coordinate departments in the ad- 
ministration of a democratic commonwealth, which has 
ever since been received as the corner-stone of Amer- 
ican constitutional jurisprudence. 

Though this assertion may at first sight seem too 
sweeping, it is borne out by the facts. During the 
first sessions of the Continental Congress no question 
was more pressing than the reorganization of the col- 
onies should they renounce their allegiance to the 
crown, nor was there one in regard to which the ma- 
jority of the delegates were more at sea. From their 
peculiar education the New Englanders were excep- 
tions to the general rule, and John Adams in particu- 
lar had thought out the problem in all its details. 
His conversation so impressed some of his colleagues 
that he was asked to put his views in a popular form. 
His first attempt was a short letter to Richard Henry 
Lee, in November, 1775, in which he starts with this 
proposition as fundamental : " A legislative, an execu- 
tive, and a judicial power comprehend the whole of 
what is meant and understood by government. It is 
by balancing each of these powers against the other 
two, that the efforts in human nature towards tyranny 
can alone be checked and restrained, and any degree 
of freedom preserved in the constitution." ^ 

His next tract, written in 1776 at the request of 
Wythe of Virginia, was printed and widely circulated, 
and similar communications were sent in reply to ap- 
plications from New Jersey, North Carolina, and pos- 
^ Works of J. Adams, iv. 186. 



478 THE LAWYERS. 

sibly other States. The effect of this discussion is ap- 
parent in all of the ten constitutions afterward drawn, 
with the exception of Pennsylvania's, which was a fail- 
ure ; but none of them passed beyond the tentative or 
embryonic stage. It therefore remained for Massa- 
chusetts to present the model, which in its main fea- 
tures has not yet been superseded. 

A first attempt was deservedly rejected by the peo- 
ple, and the work was not done until 1779; but the 
men who then met in convention at Cambridge knew 
precisely what they meant to do. Though the execu- 
tive and the legislature were a direct inheritance, need- 
ing but little change, a deep line was drawn between 
the three departments, and the theory of the coordi- 
nate judiciary was first brought to its maturity within 
the jurisdiction where it had been born. To attain 
this cherished object was the chief labor of the dele- 
gates, for to the supreme court was to be intrusted the 
dangerous task of grappling with the representative 
chambers and enforcing the popular charter. There- 
fore they made the tenure of the judges permanent; 
tRey secured their pay ; to obtain impartiality they ex- 
cluded them from political office ; while on the other 
hand they confined the legislature within its proper 
sphere, to the end that the government they created 
might be one of laws and not of men. 

The experiment has proved one of those memorable 
triumphs which mark an era. Not only has the great 
conception of New England been accepted as the fun- 
damental principle of the Federal Union, but it has 



THE LAWYERS. 479 

been adopted by every separate State ; and more than 
this, during the one hundred and six years since the 
people of our Commonwealth wrote their Constitution, 
they have had as large a measure of liberty and safety 
under the law as men have ever known on earth. 
There is no jurisdiction in the world where justice has 
been purer or more impartial; nor, probably, has there 
ever been a community, of equal numbers, which has 
produced more numerous or more splendid specimens 
of juridical and forensic talent. 

When freed from the incubus of the ecclesiastical V/ 
oligarchy the range of intellectual activity expanded, 
and in 1780 Massachusetts may be said, without ex- 
aggeration, to have led the liberal movement of the 
world ; for not only had she won almost in perfection 
the three chief prizes of modern civilization, liberty 
of speech, toleration, and equality before the law ; but 
she had succeeded in formulating those constitutional 
doctrines by which, during the nineteenth century, 
popular self-government has reached the highest ef- 
ficiency it has ever yet attained. 

A single example, however, must suffice to show 
what the rise of the class of lawyers had done for in- 
dividual security and liberty in that comparatively 
short interval of ninety years. 

Theocratic justice has been described ; the trials of 
Wheelwright, and of Anne Hutchinson, of Childe, of 
Holmes, and of Christison have been related ; and also 
the horrors perpetrated before that ghastly tribunal 
of untrained bigots, which condemned the miserable 



480 THE LAWYERS. 

witches undefended and unheard.^ For the honor of 
our Commonwealth let the tale be told of a state pros- 
ecution after her bar was formed. 

In 1768 the British Ministry saw fit to occupy Bos- 
ton with a couple of regiments, a force large enough 
to irritate, but too small to overawe, the town. From 
the outset bad feeling prevailed between the citizens 
and the soldiers, but as the time went on the exasper- 
ation increased, and early in 1770 that intense passion 
began to glow which precedes the outbreak of civil 
war. Yet though there were daily brawls, no blood 
was shed until the night of the 5th of March, when a 
rabble gathered about the sentry at the custom-house 
in State Street. He became frightened and called 
for help. Captain Preston turned out the guard, the 
mob pelted them, and they fired on the people with- 
out warning. A terrific outbreak was averted by a 
species of miracle, but the troops had to be with- 
drawn, and Preston and his men were surrendered 
and indicted for murder. 

John Adams, who was a liberal, heart and soul, had 
just come into leading practice. His young friend 

1 In England, throughout the eighteenth century, counsel were 
allowed to speak in criminal trials, in cases of treason and misde- 
- meanor only. Nor is the conduct of Massachusetts in regard to 
witches peculiar. Parallel atrocities might probably be adduced 
from the history of every European nation, even though the pro- 
cedure of the courts were more regular than was that of the 
Commission of Phips. The relation of the priest to the sorcerer 
is a most interesting phenomenon of social development; but it 
would require a treatise by itself. 



THE LAWYERS. 481 

Josiah Quincy was even more deeply pledged to the 
popular cause. On the morning after the massacre, 
Preston, doubtless at Hutchinson's suggestion, sent 
Adams a guinea as a retaining fee, which, though it 
seemed his utter ruin to accept, he did not dream of 
refusing. What Quincy went through may be guessed 
from his correspondence with his father. 

Braintree, March 22, 1770. 

My Dear Son, I am under great affliction at 
hearing the bitterest reproaches uttered against you, 
for having become an advocate for those criminals 
who are charged with the murder of their fellow-citi- 
zens. Good God ! Is it possible ? I will not be- 
lieve it. 

Just before I returned home from Boston, I knew, 
indeed, that on the day those criminals were commit- 
ted to prison, a sergeant had inquired for you at your 
brother's house ; but I had no apprehension that it 
was possible an application would be made to you to 
undertake their defence. Since then I have been told 
that you have actually engaged for Captain Preston ; 
and I have heard the severest reflections made upon 
the occasion, by men who had just before manifested 
the highest esteem for you, as one destined to be a 
saviour of your country. I must own to you, it has 
filled the bosom of your aged and infirm parent with 
anxiety and distress, lest it should not only prove 
true, but destructive of your reputation and interest ; 



482 THE LAWYERS. 

and I repeat, I will not believe it, unless it be con- 
firmed by your own mouth, or under your own hand. 
Your anxious and distressed parent, 

JosiAH QuiNCY. 

Boston, March 26, 1770. 

Honoured Sir, I have little leisure, and less in- 
clination, either to know or to take notice of those 
ignorant slanderers who have dared to utter their 
"bitter reproaches" in your hearing against me, for 
having become an advocate for criminals charged with 
murder. . . . Before pouring their reproaches into 
the ear of the aged and infirm, if they had been 
friends, they would have surely spared a little reflec- 
tion on the nature of an attorney's oath and duty. . . . 

Let such be told, sir, that these criminals, charged 
with murder, are not yet legally proved guilty, and 
therefore, however criminal, are entitled, by the laws 
of God and man, to all legal counsel and aid; that 
my duty as a man obliged me to undertake ; that my 
duty as a lawyer strengthened the obligation. . . . 
This and much more might be told with great truth ; 
and I dare affirm that you and this whole people will 
one day rejoice that I became an advocate for the 
aforesaid "criminals," charged with the murder of 
our fellow-citizens. 

I never harboured the expectation, nor any great de- 
sire, that all men should speak well of me. To enquire 
my duty, and to do it, is my aim. . . . When a plan 
of conduct is formed with an honest deliberation, 



THE LAWYERS. 483 

neither murmuring, slander, nor reproaches move. . . . 
There are honest men in all sects, — I wish their ap- 
probation ; — there are wicked bigots in all parties, — 
I abhor them. 

I am, truly and affectionately, your son, 

JOSIAH QUINCY, Jr.1 

Many of the most respected citizens asserted and 
believed that the soldiers had fired with premeditated 
malice, for the purpose of revenge ; and jsopular in- 
dignation was so deep and strong that even the judges 
were inclined to shrink. As Hutchinson was acting 
governor at the time, the chief responsibility fell on 
Benjamin Lynde, the senior associate, who was by 
good fortune tolerably competent. He was the son of 
the elder Lynde, who, with the exception of Paul 
Dudley, was the only provincial chief justice worthy 
to be called a lawyer. 

The juries were of course drawn from among those 
men who afterward fought at Lexington and Bunker 
Hill, and, like the presiding judge and the counsel, 
they sympathized with the Revolutionary cause. Yet 
the prisoners were patiently tried according to the law 
and the evidence ; all that skill, learning, and courage 
could do for them was done, the court charged impar- 
tially, and the verdicts were. Not guilty. 

^ Memoir of Josiah Quincy, Jr. pp. 26, 27. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE REVOLUTION. 

Status appears to be that stage of civilization 
whence advancing communities emerge into the era 
of individual liberty. In its most perfect develop- 
ment it takes the form of caste, and the presumption 
is the movement toward caste begins upon the aban- 
donment of a wandering life, and varies in intensity 
with the environment and temperament of each race, 
the feebler sinking into a state of equilibrium, when 
change by spontaneous growth ceases to be percepti- 
ble. So long as the brain remains too feeble for sus- 
tained original thought, and man therefore lacks the 
energy to rebel against routine, this condition of ex- 
istence must continue, and its inevitable tendency is 
toward rigid distinctions of rank, and as a necessary 
consequence toward the limitation of the range of am- 
bition, by the conventional lines dividing the occupa- 
tions of the classes. Such at least in a general way 
was the progression of the Jews, and in a less marked 
degree of the barbarians who overran the Roman Em- 
pire. Yet even these, when they acquired permanent 
abodes, gravitated strongly enough toward caste to 
produce a social system based on monopoly and privi- 
lege which lasted through many centuries. On the 



THE REVOLUTION. 485 

other hand, the democratic formula of "equality be- 
fore the law " best defines the modern conception of 
human relations, and this maxim indicates a tone of 
thought directly the converse of that which begot 
status; for whereas the one strove to raise impass- 
able barriers against free competition in the struggle 
for existence, the ideal of the other is to offer the 
fullest scope for the expansion of the faculties. 

As in Western Europe church and state alike rested 
upon the customs of the Middle Ages, a change so 
fundamental must have wrought the overthrow, not 
only of the vastest vested interests, but of the pro- 
foundest religious prejudices, consequently, it could 
not have been accomplished peaceably ; and in point 
of fact the conservatives were routed in two ter- 
rific outbreaks, whereof the second was the sequence 
of the first, though following it after a considerable 
interval of time. By the wars of the Reformation 
freedom of thought was gained; by the revolutions 
of the eighteenth century, which swept away the incu- 
bus of feudalism, liberty of action was won ; and as 
Massachusetts had been colonized by the radicals of 
the first insurrection, it was not unnatural that their 
children should have led the second. So much may 
be readily conceded, and yet the inherited tendency 
toward liberalism alone would have been insufficient 
to have inspired the peculiar unanimity of sentiment 
which animated her people in their resistance to Great 
Britain, and which perhaps was stronger among her 
clergy, whose instincts regarding domestic affairs were 



486 THE REVOLUTION. 

intensely conservative, than among any other portion 
of her population. The reasons for this phenomenon 
are worthy of investigation, for they are not only in- 
teresting in themselves, but they furnish an admirable 
illustration of the irresistible action of antecedent and 
external causes on the human mind. 

Under tlie Puritan Commonwealth the church gave 
distinction and power, and therefore monoijolized the 
ability which sought professional life ; but under the 
provincial government new careers were opened, and 
intellectual activity began to flow in broader chan- 
nels. John Adams illustrates the effect produced by 
the changed environment ; when only twenty he made 
this suggestive entry in his Diary : " The following 
questions may be answered some time or other, 
namely, — Where do we find a precept in the Gos- 
pel requiring Ecclesiastical Synods ? Convocations ? 
Councils? Decrees? Creeds? Confessions? Oaths? 
Subscriptions? and whole cart-loads of other trum- 
pery that we find religion encumbered with in these 
days ? " 1 

Such men became lawyers, doctors, or merchants ; 
theology ceased to occupy their minds ; and gradually 
the secular thought of New England grew to be coin- 
cident with that of the other colonies. 

Throughout America the institutions favored indi- 
viduality. No privileged class existed among the 
whites. Under the careless rule of Great Britain 
habits of personal liberty had taken root, which 
^ Works of J, Adams, ii. 5. 



THE REVOLUTION. 487 

showed themselves in the tenacity wherewith the peo- 
ple clung to their customs of self-government; and 
so long as these usages were respected, under which 
they had always lived, and which they believed to be 
as well established as Magna Charta, there were not 
in all the king's broad dominions more loyal subjects 
than men like Washington, Jefferson, and Jay. 

The generation now living can read the history of 
the Revolution dispassionately, and to them it is grow- [ 
ing clear that our ancestors were technically in the 
wrong. For centuries Parliament has been theoreti- 
cally absolute ; therefore it might constitutionally tax 
the colonies, or do whatsoever else with them it 
pleased. Practically, however, it is self-evident that 
the most perfect despotism must be limited by the 
extent to which subjects will obey, and this is a mat- 
ter of habit ; rebellions, therefore, are usually caused 
by the conservative instinct, represented by the will 
of the sovereign, attempting to enforce obedience to 
customs which a people have outgrown. 

In 177G, though the Middle Ages had passed, their 
traditions still prevailed in Europe, and probably the 
antaofonism between this survival of a dead civiliza- 
tion and the modern democracy of America was too 
deep for any arbitrament save trial by battle. Iden- 
tically the same dispute had arisen in England the 
century before, when the commons rebelled against 
the prerogatives of the crown, and Cromwell fought, 
like Washington, in the cause of individual emancipa- 
tion; but the movement in Great Britain was too 



488 THE REVOLUTION. 

radical for the age, and was followed by a reaetiou 
whose force was not spent when George III. came to 
the throne. 

Precedent is only inflexible among stationary races, 
\ and advancing nations glory in their capacity for 
change ; hence it is precisely those who have led revolt 
successfully who have won the brightest fame. If, 
therefore, it be admitted that they should rank among 
^ mankind's noblest benefactors, who have risked their 
lives to win the freedom we enjoy, and which seems 
destined to endure, there are few to whom posterity 
owes a deeper debt than to our early statesmen ; nor, 
judging their handiwork by the test of time, have 
many lived who in genius have surpassed them. In 
the fourth article of their Declaration of Rights, the 
Continental Congress resolved that the colonists " are 
; entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation 
in their several provincial legislatures, ... in all cases 
of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the 
negative of their sovereign, in such manner as has 
been heretofore used and accustomed. But, . . . we 
cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of 
Parliament as are, hand fide, restrained to the regula- 
tion of our external commerce." 

In 1778 a statute was passed, of which an English 
jurist wrote in 1885 : " One act, indeed, of the British 
Parliament might, looked at in the light of history, claim 
a peculiar sanctity. It is certainly an enactment of 
which the terms, we may safely predict, will never be 
repealed and the spirit never be violated. ... It pro- 



THE REVOLUTION. 489 

vides that Parliament ' will not impose any duty, tax 
or assessment whatever, payable in any o£ his majes- 
ty's colonies . . . except only such duties as it may 
be expedient to impose for the regidation of com- 
merce.' " ^ 

Thus is the memory of their grievance held sacred 
by the descendants of their adversaries after the lapse 
of a century, and the local self-government for which 
they pleaded has become the immutable policy of the 
empire. The principles they laid down have been 
equally enduring, for they proclaimed the equality of 
men before the law, the corner-stone of modern civil- 
ization, and the Constitution they wrote still remains 
the fundamental charter of the liberties of the repub- 
lic of the United States. 

Nevertheless it remains true that secular liberalism 
alone could never have produced the pecidiarly acri- 
monious hostility to Great Britain wherein Massachu- 
setts stood preeminent, whose causes, if traced, will be 
found imbedded at the very foundation of her social 
organization, and to have been steadily in action ever 
since the settlement. Too little study is given to ec- 
clesiastical history, for probably nothing throws so 
much light on certain phases of development; and 
particularly in the case of this Commonwealth the im- 
pulses which moulded her destiny cannot be under- 
stood unless the events that stimulated the passions 
of her clergy are steadily kept in view. 

The early aggrandizement of her priests has been 
^ The Law of the Constitution, Dicey, p. 62. 



490 THE REVOLUTION. 

described ; the inevitable conflict with the law into 
which their ambition plunged them, and the over- 
throw of the theocracy which resulted therefrom, have 
been related ; but the causes that kept alive the old 
exasperation with England throughout the eighteenth 
century have not yet been told. 

The influence of men like Leverett and Colman 
tended to broaden the church, but necessarily the 
process was slow ; and there is no lack of evidence 
that the majority of the ministers had little relish for 
the toleration forced upon them by the second char- 
ter. It is not surprising, therefore, to find the sec- 
taries soon again driven to invoke the protection of 
the king, 

Thoug-h doubtless some monastic orders have been 
vowed to poverty, it will probably be generally con- 
ceded that a life of privation has not found favor 
with divines as a class ; and one of the earliest acts of 
the provincial legislature bid each town choose an 
able and orthodox minister to dispense the Word of 
God, who should be " suitably encouraged " by an as- 
sessment on all inhabitants without distinction. This 
was for many years a bitter grievance to the dissent- 
ing minority ; but there was worse to come ; for some- 
times the majority were heterodox, when pastors were 
elected who gave great scandal to their evangelical 
brethren. Therefore, for the prevention of " atheism, 
irreligion and prophaness," ^ it was enacted in 1775' 
that the justices of the county should report any town 
1 Province Laws, 1715, c. 17. --^- 



THE REVOLUTION. 491 

without an orthodox minister, and thereupon the Gen- 
eral Court should settle a candidate recommended to 
them by the ordained elders, and levy a special tax 
for his support. Nor could men animated by the fer- 
vent piety which raised the Mathers to eminence in 
their profession be expected to sit by tamely while 
blasphemers not only worshipped openly, but refused 
to contribute to their incomes. 

" We expect no other but Satan will show his rage 
against us for our endeavors to lessen his kingdom of 
darkness. He hath grievously afflicted me (by God's 
permission) by infatuating or bewitching three or four 
who live in a corner of my parish with Quaker no- 
tions, [who] now hold a separate meeting by them- 
selves." 1 

The heretics, on their side, were filled with the 
same stubborn spirit which had caused them " obsti- 
nately and proudly " to " persecute " Norton and En- 
dicott in earlier days. In 1722 godly preachers were 
settled at Dartmouth and Tiverton, under the act, the 
majority of whose people were Quakers and Baptists ; 
and the Friends tell their own story in a petition they 
presented to the crown in 1724: "That the said Jo- 
seph Anthony and John Siffon were appointed asses- 
sors of the taxes for the said town of Tiverton, and 
the said John Akin and said Philip Tabor for the town 
of Dartmouth, but some of the said assessors being of 
the people called Quakers, and others of them also 

1 Rev. S. Danforth, 1720. Mass. Hist. Coll. fourth series, i. 
258. 



f 



^ 



492 THE REVOLUTION. 

dissenting from the Presbyterians and Independents, 
and greatest part of the inhabitants of the said towns 
being also Quakers or Anabaptists ... the said asses- 
sors duly assessed the other taxes . . . relating to the 
support of government . . . yet they could not in con- 
science assess any of the inhabitants of the said towns 
anything for or towards the maintenance of any min- 
isters. 

" That the said Joseph Anthony, John Siffon, John 
Akin and Philip Tabor, (on pretence of their non- 
compliance with the said law) were on the 25th of 
the month called May, 1723, committed to the jail 
aforesaid, where they still continue prisoners under 
great sufferings and hardships both to themselves and 
families, and where they must remain and die, if not 
relieved by the king's royal clemancy and favour." ^ 

A hearing was had upon this petition before the 
Privy Council, and in June, 1724, an order was made 
directing the remission of the special taxes and the 
release of the prisoners, who were accordingly liber- 
ated in obedience thereto, after they had been incar- 
cerated for thirteen months. 

The blow was felt to be so severe that the conven- 
tion of ministers the next May decided to convene a 
synod, and Dr. Cotton Mather was appointed to draw 
up a petition to the legislature. 

" Considering the great and visible decay of piety 
in the country, and the growth of many miscarriages, 
which we fear may have provoked the glorious Lord 
1 Gough's Quakers, iv. 222, 223. 



THE REVOLUTION. 493 

in a series of various judgments wonderfully to distress 
us. . . . It is humbly desired that . . . the . . . 
churches . . . meet by their pastors ... in a synod, 
and from thence offer their advice upon. . . . AVhat 
are the miscarriages whereof we have reason to think 
the judguients of heaven, ujDon us, call us to be more 
generaUy sensible, and what may be the most evan- 
gelical and effectual expedients to put a stop unto 
those or the like miscarriages." ^ 

The " evangelical expedient "' was of course to re- 
vive the Cambridge Platform ; nor was such a scheme 
manifestly impossible, for the council voted " that the 
synod . . . will be agreeable to this board, and the 
reverend ministers are desired to take their own time, 
for the said assembly; and it is earnestly wished the 
issue thereof may be a happy reformation." ^ In the 
house of representatives this resolution was read and 
referred to the next session. 

Meanwhile the Ejiiscopalian clergjonen of Boston, 
in much alarm, presented a memorial to the General 
Court, remonstrating against the proposed measure ; 
but the council resolved " it contained an indecent 
reflection on the proceedings of that board," ^ and 
dismissed it. Nothing discouraged, the remonstrants 
applied for protection to the Bishop of 'London, who 
brought the matter to the attention of the law officers 
of the crown. In their opinion to call a synod would 
be " a contempt of his majesty's prerogative," and if 

1 Hutch. HisU 3d ed. ii. 292, note. 

* Chalmers's Opinions, i. 8. * Idem, p. 9. 



494 THE REVOLUTION. 

" notwithstanding, . . . they shall continue to hold 
their assembly, . . . the principal actors therein 
[should] be prosecuted . . . for a misdemeanour," ^ 

Steadily and surely the coil was tightening which 
was destined to strangle the established church of 
Massachusetts ; but the resistance of the ministers 
was desperate, and lent a tinge of theological hate to 
the outbreak of the Revolution. They believed it 
would be impossible for them to remain a dominant 
priesthood if Episcopalianism, supported by the pat- 
ronage of the crown, should be allowed to take root in 
the land ; yet the Episcopalians represented conser- 
vatism, therefore they were forced to become radicals, 
and the liberalism they taught was fated to destroy 
their power. 

Meanwhile their sacred vineyard lay open to at- 
tack upon every side. At Boston the royal governors 
went to King's Chapel and encouraged the use of the 
liturgy, while an inroad was made into Connecticut 
from New York. Early in the century a certain 
Colonel Heathcote organized a regular system of in- 
vasion. He was a man eminently fitted for the task, 
being filled with zeal for the conversion of dissenters. 
" I have the charity to believe that, after having heard 
one of our ministers preach, they will not look upon 
our church to be such a monster as she is represented ; 
and being convinced of some of the cheats, many of 
them may duly consider of the sin of schism." ^ 
* " They have abundance of odd kind of laws, to pre- 

^ Chalmers's Opinions, p. 13. 
* Conn. Cfiurch Documents, i. 12. 



THE REVOLUTION. 495 

vent any dissenting . . . and endeavour to keep the 
people in as much blindness and unaequaintedness 
with any other religion as possible, but in a more par- 
ticular manner the church, looking upon her as the 
most dangerous enemy they have to grapple withal, 
and abundance of pains is taken to make the ignorant 
think as bad as possible of her ; and I really believe 
that more than half the peo^jle in that government 
think our church to be little better than the Papist, 
and they fail not to improve every little thing against 
us." 1 

He had little liking for the elders, whom he de- 
scribed as being " as absolute in their respective par- 
ishes as the Pope of Rome ; " but he felt kindly 
toward " the passive, obedient people, who dare not do 
otherwise than obey." ^ He explained the details of 
his plan in his letters, and though he was aware of the 
difficulties, he did not despair, his chief anxiety being 
to get a suitable missionary. He finally chose the 
Rev. Mr. Muirson, and in IT 06 began a series of 
proselytizing tours. Nevertheless, the clergyman was 
wroth at the treatment he received. 

Honor' D Sir, I entreat your acceptance of my 
most humble and hearty thanks for the kind and 
Christian advice you were pleased to tender me in re- 
lation to Connecticut. ... I know that meekness and 
moderation is most agreeable to the mind of our 
blessed Saviour, Christ, who himself was meek and 
lowly, and would have all his followers to learn that 
1 Conn. Church Documents, i. 9. ^ Idem, i. 10. 



496 THE REVOLUTION. 

lesson of him. ... I have duly considered all these 
things, and have carried myself civilly and kindly to 
the Independent party, but they have ungratefully re- 
sented my love ; yet I will further consider the obli- 
gations that my holy religion lays upon me, to forgive 
injuries and wrongs, and to return good for their evil. 
... I desired only a liberty of conscience might be 
allowed to the members of the National Church of 
England ; which, notwithstanding, they seemed un- 
willing to grant, and left no means untried, both foul 
and fair, to prevent the settling the church among 
them ; for one of their justices came to my lodging 
and forewarned me, at my peril, from preaching, tell- 
ing me that I did an illegal thing in bringing in new 
ways among them; the people were likewise threat- 
ened with prison, and a forfeiture of ,£5 for coming 
to hear me. It will require more time than you 
will willingly bestow on these lines to express how 
rigidly and severely they treat our people, by taking 
their estates by distress, when they do not willingly 
pay to support their ministers. . . . They tell our 
people that they will not suffer the house of God to 
be defiled with idolatrous worship and superstitious 
ceremonies. . . . They say the sign of the cross is the 
mark of the beast and the sign of the devil, and that 
those who receive it are given to the devil. . . . 
Honored sir, your most assured friend, . . . 

Geo. Muirson. 

Rye, ^th January, 1707-8.1 

1 Conn. Church Documents, i. 29. 



THE REVOLUTION. 497 

However, in spite of his difficulties, he was able to 
boast that " I have ... in one town, . . . baptized 
about 32, young and old, and administered the Holy 
Sacrament to 18, who never received it before. Each 
time I had a numerous congregation." ^ 

The foregoing correspondence was with the secre- 
tary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 
which had been incorporated in 1701, and had pi'es- 
ently afterward appointed Colonel Heathcote as their 
agent. They could have chosen no more energetic 
representative, nor was it long before his exertions be- 
gan to bear fruit. In 1707 nineteen inhabitants of 
Stratford sent a memorial to the Bishop of London, 
the forerunner of many to come. " Because by reason 
of the said laws we are not able to support a minister, 
we further pray your lordship may be pleased to 
send one over with a missionary allowance from the 
honourable corporation, invested with full power, so 
as that he may preach and we hear the blessed Gospel 
of Jesus Christ, without molestation and terror." ^ 
X, The Anglican prelates conceived it to be their 
duty to meddle with the religious concerns of New 
England ; therefore, by means of the organization of 
the venerable society, they proceeded to plant a num- 
ber of missions throughout the country, whose mis- 
sionaries were paid from the corporate funds. What- 
ever opinion may be formed of the wisdom of a pol- 
icy certain to exasperate deeply so powerful and so 

1 Conn. Church Documents, i. 23. 
" Idem, i. 34. 



498 THE REVOLUTION. 

revengeful a class as the Congregational elders, there 
can be no doubt the Episcopalians achieved a meas- 
ure of success, in the last degree alarming, not only 
among the laity, but among the clergy themselves. 
Mr. Keed, pastor of Stratford, was the first to go over, 
and was of course deprived of his parish ; his defec- 
tion was followed in 1722 by that of the rector of 
Yale and six other ministers ; and the Rev. Joseph 
Webb, who thought the end was near, wrote in deep 
affliction to break the news to his friends in Boston. 

Fairfield, Oct. 2, 1722. 

Eeverend and Honoured Sir, The occasion of 
my now giving you the trouble of these few lines is 
to me, and I presume to many others, melancholy 
enough. You have perhaps heard before now, or will 
hear before these come to hand, (I suppose) of the re- 
volt of several persons of figure among vis unto the 
Church of England. There 's the Rev. Mr. Cutler, 
rector of our college, and Mr. Daniel Brown, the 
tutor thereof. There are also of ordained ministers, 
pastors of several churches among us, the Rev. Mes- 
sieurs following, viz. John Hart of East Guilford, 
Samuel Whittlesey of Wallingford, Jared Eliot of 
Kennelworth, . . . Samuel Johnson of West-Haven, 
and James Wetmore of North-Haven. They are the 
most of them reputed men of considerable learning, 
and all of them of a virtuous and blameless conver- 
sation. I apprehend the axe is hereby laid to the 
root of our civil and sacred enjoyments ; and a dole- 



THE REVOLUTION. 499 

ful gap opened for trouble and confusion in our 
churches. . . . It is a very dark day ^vith us; and we 
need pity, prayers and counsel.^ 

From the tone in which these tidings were received 
it is plain that the charity and humility of the golden 
age of Massachusetts were not yet altogether extinct 
among her ecclesiastics. The ministers published 
their " sentiments " in a document beginning as fol- 
lows : — 

'' These new Episcopalians have declared their de- 
sire to introduce an usurpation and a superstition into 
the church of God, clearly condemned in the sacred 
Scriptures, which our loyalty and chastity to our 
Saviour, obliges us to keep close unto ; and a tyranny, 
from which the whole church, which desires to be re- 
formed, has groaned that it may be delivered. . . . 
The scandalous conjunction of these unhappy men 
with the Papists is, perhaps, more than what they have 
themselves duly considered."^ In "A Faithful Rela- 
tion " of what had happened it was observed : "• It has 
caused some indignation in them,'' (the people) "• to 
see the vile indignity cast by these cudweeds upon 
those excellent servants of God, who were the leaders 
of the flock that followed our Saviour into this wilder- 
ness : and upon the ministry of them, and their suc- 

1 Rev. Joseph Webb to Dr. C. Mather. Maxs. Hist. Coll. 
second series, ii. 131. 

■■^ The Sentiments of the Several Ministers in Boston. Mass. 
Hist. Coll. second series, ii. 133. 



500 THE REVOLUTION. 

cessours, in which there has been seen for more than 
forescore years together, the power and blessing of 
God for the salvation of many thousands in the suc- 
cessive generations ; with a success beyond what any 
of them which set such an high value on the Episco- 
pal ordination could ever boast of ! . . . It is a sen- 
sible addition, unto their horrour, to see the horrid 
character of more than one or two, who have got 
themselves qualified with Episcopal ordination, . . . 
and come over as missionaries, perhaps to serve scarce 
twenty families of such people, in a town of several 
hundred families of Christians, better instructed than 
the very missionaries : to think, that they must have 
no other ministers, but such as are ordained, and 
ordered by them, who have sent over such tippling 
sots unto them : instead of those pious and painful 
and faithful instructors which they are now blessed 

withal : " 1 

Only three of the converts had the fortitude to 
withstand the pressure to which they were exposed : 
Cutler, Johnson, and Brown went to England for or- 
dination ; there Brown died of small-pox, but Cutler 
returned to Boston as a missionary, and as he, too, 
possessed a certain clerical aptitude for forcible ex- 
pression, it is fitting he should relate his own ex- 
periences : — 

" I find that, in spite of malice and the basest arts 
our godly enemies can easily stoop to, that the interest 

1 " A Faithful Relation of a Late Occurrence." Mass. Hist. 
Coll. second series, ii. 138, 139. 



THE REVOLUTION. 501 

of the church grows and penetrates into the very heart 
of this country. . . . This great town swarms with 
them " (churchmen), " and we are so confident of our 
power and interest that, out of four Parliament-men 
which this town sends to our General Assembly, the 
church intends to put up for two, though I am not 
very sanguine about our success in it. . . . My church 
grows faster than I expected, and, while it doth so, I 
will not be mortified by all the lies and affronts they 
pelt me with. My greatest difficulty ariseth from 
another quarter, and is owing to the covetous and 
malicious spirit of a clergyman in this town, who, in 
lying and villany, is a perfect overmatch for any dis- 
senter that I know ; and, after all the odium that he 
contracted heretofore among them, is fully recon- 
ciled and endeared to them by his falsehood to the 
church." 1 

Time did not tend to pacify the feud. There was 
no bishop in America, and candidates had to be sent 
to England for ordination ; nor without such an offi- 
cial was it found possible to enforce due discipline ; 
hence the anxiety of Dr. Johnson, and, indeed, of all 
the Episcopalian clergy, to have one appointed for the 
colonies was not unreasonable. Nevertheless, the op- 
position they met with was acrimonious in the extreme, 
so much so as to make them hostile to the charters 
themselves, which they thought sheltered their adver- 
saries. 

^ Dr. Timothy Cutler to Dr. Zachary Grey, April 2, 1725. 
Perry's Collection, iii. 6G3. 



A 



> 



602 THE REVOLUTION. 

" The king, by his instructions to our governor, de- 
mands a salary ; and if he punishes our obstinacy by 
vacating our charter, I shall think it an eminent bless- 
ing of his illustrious reign." ^ " As I said, infidelity 
prevails also among us. Chubb's and Dr. Clarke's 
works, etc., do much mischief among us. One Kent, 
a dissenting teacher, is now suspended by a council 
for Arianism and Arminianism, though the latter is 
grown so venial that it would have been hushed had 
it not been for the former." ^ 

Whitefield came in 1740, and the tumult of the 
great revival roused fresh animosities. 

" When Mr. Whitefield first arrived here the whole 
town was alarmed. . . . The conventicles were crowded ; 
but he chose rather our Common, where multitudes 
might see him in all his awful postures ; besides that, 
in one crowded conventicle, before he came in, six 
were killed in a fright. The fellow treated the most 
venerable with an air of superiority. But he forever 
lashed and anathematized the Church of England ; 
and that was enough. 

" After him came one Tennent, a monster ! impu- 
dent and noisy, and told them all they were damn'd, 
damn'd, damn'd ! This charmed them, and in the 
most dreadful winter that I ever saw, people wal- 
lowed in the snow night and day for the benefit of his 

1 Dr. Cutler to Dr. Grey, April 20, 1731. Perry's Coll. iii. 
672. 

2 Dr. Cutler to Dr. Grey, Jane 5, 1735. Perry's Coll. iii 
674. 



THE REVOLUTION. 503 

beastly brayings ; and many ended their days under 
these fatigues. Both of them carried more money out 
of these parts than the poor could be thankful for." ^ 

The excitement was followed by its natural reaction 
conversions became numerous, and the unevangelical 
temper this bred between the rival clergymen is pain- 
fully apparent in a correspondence wherein Dr. John- 
son became involved. Mr. Gold, the Congregationalist 
minister of Stratford, whom he called a dissenter, had 
said of him "that he was a thief, and robber of 
churches, and had no business in the place ; that his 
church doors stood open to all mischief and wicked- 
ness, and other words of like import." He there- 
fore wrote to defend himself : " As to my having no 
business here, I will only say that to me it appears 
most evident that I have as much business here at 
least as you have, — being appointed by a society in 
England incorporated by royal charter to provide 
ministers for the church people in America ; nor does 
his majesty allow of any establishment here, exclusive 
of the church, much less of anything that should pre- 
clude the society he has incorporated from providing 
and sending ministers to the church people in these 
countries." ^ To which Mr. Gold replied : — 

As for the pleas which you make for Col. Lewis, and 
others that have broke away disorderly from our church, 

1 Dr. Cutler to Dr. Grey. Sept. 24, 1743. Perry's Coll. iii 
676. 

* Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson, p. 108. 



604 THE REVOLUTION. 

I think there 's neither weight nor truth in them ; nor 
do I believe such poor shifts will stand them nor you 
in any stead in the awful day of account ; and as for 
your saying that as bad as you are yet you lie open to 
conviction, — for my part I find no reason to think 
you do, seeing you are so free and full in denying 
plain matters of fact. ... I don't think it worth my 
while to say anything further in the affair, and as you 
began the controversy against rule or justice, so I hope 
modesty will induce you to desist ; and do assure you 
that if you see cause to make any more replies, my 
purpose is, without reading of them, to put them un- 
der the pot among my other thorns and there let one 
flame quench the matter. . . . Hez. Gold. 

Stratford, July 21, 1741.^ 

And so by an obvious sequence of cause and effect 
it came to pass that the clergy were early ripe for 
rebellion, and only awaited their opj^ortunity. Nor 
could it have been otherwise. An autocratic priest- 
hood had seen their order stripped of its privileges 
one by one, until nothing remained but their moral 
empire over their parishioners, and then at last not 
only did an association of rival ecclesiastics send over 
emissaries to steal away their people, but they pro- 
posed to establish a bishop in the land. The thought 
was wormwood. He would be rich, he would live in a 
palace, he would be supported by the patronage and 
pomp of the royal governors ; the imposing ceremo- 

^ Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson, p. 111. 



THE REVOLUTION. 505 

nial would become fashionable ; and in imagination 
they already saw themselves reduced to the humble 
position of dissenters in their own kingdom. Jona- 
than Mayhew was called a heretic by his more conser- 
vative brethren, but he was one of the ablest and the 
most acrid of the Boston ministers. He took little 
pains to disguise his feelings, and so early as 1750 he 
preached a sermon, which was once famous, wherein 
he told his hearers that it was their duty to oppose 
the encroachment of the British prelates, if necessary, 
by force. 

" Suppose, then, it was allowed, in general, that the 
clergy were a useful order of men ; that they ought 
to be esteemed very highly in love for their work's 
sake, and to be decently supported by those they 
serve, ' the laborer being worthy of his reward.' Sup- 
pose, further, that a number of reverend and right 
reverend drones, who worked not ; who preached, per- 
haps, but once a year, and then not the gospel of 
Jesus Christ, but the divine right of tithes, the dignity 
of their office as ambassadors of Christ, . . . suppose 
such men as these, spending their lives in effeminacy, 
luxury, and idleness ; . . . suppose this should be the 
case, . . . would not everybody be astonished at such 
insolence, injustice, and impiety ? " ^ " Civil tyranny 
is usually small in its beginning, like ' the drop of a 
bucket,' till at length, like a mighty torrent ... it 
bears down all before it. . . . Thus it is as to eccle- 

1 " Discourse concerning Unlimited Submission," Jonathan 
Mayhew. Thornton's American Pulpit, pp. 71, 72. 



506 THE REVOLUTION. 

siastical tyranny also — the most cruel, intolerable, 
and impious of any. From small beginnings, ' it ex- 
alts itself above all that is called God and that is 
worshipped.' People have no security against being 
unmercifully priest-ridden but by keeping all imperi- 
ous bishops, and other clergymen who love to 'lord 
it over God's heritage,' from getting their foot into 
the stirrup at all, . . . For which reason it becomes 
every friend to truth and human kind, every lover of 
God and the Christian religion, to bear a part in op- 
posing this hateful monster." ^ 

Between these envenomed priests peace was impos- 
sible ; each year brought with it some new aggression 
which added fuel to the flame. In 1763, Mr. Apthorp, 
missionary at Cambridge, published a pamphlet, in 
answer, as he explained, to " some anonymous libels 
which appeared in our newspapers . . . grossly re- 
flecting on the society & their missionaries, & in par- 
ticular on the mission at Cambridge." ^ 

By this time the passions of the Congregationalist 
divines had reached a point when words seemed hardly 
adequate to give them expression. The Rev. Ezra 
Stiles wrote to Dr. Mayhew in these terms : — 

" Shall we be hushed into silence, by those whose 
tender mercies are cruelty ; and who, notwithstanding 
their pretence of moderation, wish the subversion of 

^ Preface to " A Discourse concerning Unlimited Submis- 
sion," Jonathan Mayhew. Thornton's Amer. Pulpit, pp. 50, 51. 

^ East Apthorp to the Secretary, June 25, 1763. Perry's 
Coll iii. 500. 



THE REVOLUTION. 507 

our churches, and are combined, in united, steady 
and vigorous effort, by all the arts of subtlety and 
intreag'ue, for our ruin ? " ^ 

Mr. Stiles need have felt no anxiety, for, according 
to Mr. Apthorp, " this occasion was greedily seized, 
... by a dissenting minister of Boston, a man of a 
singular character, of good abilities, but of a turbu- 
lent & contentious disposition, at variance, not only 
with the Church of England, but in the essential doc- 
trines of religion, with most of his own party." ^ He 
alluded to a tract written by Dr. Mayhew in answer 
to his pamphlet, in which he reproduced the charge 
made by Mr. Stiles : " The society have long had a 
formal design to dissolve and root out all our New- 
England churches ; or, in other words, to reduce them 
all to the Episcopal form." ^ And withal he clothed 
liis thoughts in language which angered Mr. Caner : — 

" A few days after, MF Apthorpe published the en- 
closed pamphlet, in vindication of the institution and 
comhict of the society, which occasioned the ungenteel 
i-eHcctions which your grace will find in DF Mayhew's 
pamphlet, in which, not content with the personal 
abuse of ]\lF Apthorpe, he has insulted the missions 
in general, the society, the Church of England, in 
short, the whole rational establishment, in so dirty a 
manner, that it seems to be below the character of a 
gentleman to enter into controversy with him. In 

1 Dr. Ezra Stiles to Dr. Mayhew, 1763. Life of Mayhew, p. 246. 
■^ East Apthorp to the Secretary. Perry's Coll. iii. 500. 
8 Observations on the Charter, etc. of the Society, p. 107, 



508 THE REVOLUTION. 

most of his sermons, of which he published a great 
number, he introduces some malicious invectives 
against the society or the Church of England, and if 
at any time the most candid and gentle remarks are 
made upon such abuse, he breaks forth into such bit- 
ter and scurrilous personal reflections, that in truth 
no one cares to have anything to do with him. His 
doctrinal principles, which seem chiefly copied from 
L*^ Shaftsbury, Bolingbroke, &c., are so offensive to 
the generalty of the dissenting ministers, that they 
refuse to admit him a member of their association, 
yet they appear to be pleased with his abusing the 
Church of England." i 

The Archbishop of Canterbury himself now inter- 
fered, and tried to calm the tumult by a candid and 
dignified reply to Dr. Mayhew, in which he labored to 
show the harmlessness of the proposed bishopric. 

" Therefore it is desired, that two or more bishops 
may be appointed for them, to reside where his majesty 
shall think most convenient [not in New England, 
but in one of the Episcopalian colonies] ; that they 
may have no concern in the least with any person who 
do not profess themselves to be of the Church of Eng- 
land, but may ordain ministers for such as do ; . . . 
and take such oversight of the Episcopal clergy, as the 
Bishop of London's commissaries in those parts have 
been empowered to take, and have taken, without 
offence. But it is not desired in the least that they 

1 Rev. Mr. Caner to the Archbishop of Canterbury, June 8, 
17C3. Perry's Coll. iii. 497, 498. 



THE REVOLUTION. 509 

should hold courts ... or be vested with any author- 
ity, uovv exercised either by provincial governors or 
subordinate magistrates, or infringe or diminish any 
privileges and liberties enjoyed by any of the laity, 
even of our own communion.*' ^ 

But the archbishop should hav^e known that the 
passions of rival ecclesiastics are not to be allayed. 
The Episcopalians had become so exasperated as to 
want nothing less than the overthrow of popular gov- 
ernment. Dr. Johnson wrote in 1763 : " Is there then 
nothing more that can be done either for obtaining 
bishops or demolishing these pernicious charter gov- 
ernments, and reducing them all to one form in im- 
mediate dependence on the king ? I cannot help call- 
ing them pernicious, for they are indeed so as well for 
the best good of the people themselves as for the in- 
terests of true religion." ^ 

The Congregation alists, on the other hand, inflamed 
with jealousy, were ripe for rebellion. On March 22, 
1765, the Stamp Act became law, and the clergy 
threw themselves into the combat with characteristic 
violence. Oliver had been appointed distributor, but 
liis house was attacked and he was forced to resign. 
The next evening but one the rabble visited Hutch- 
inson, who was lieutenant-governor, and broke his 
windows ; and there was general fear of further riot- 
ing. In the midst of this crisis, on the 25th of Au- 

1 An Answer to Dr. Mayhew's Observations, etc. Dr. Seeker, 
p. 51. 

2 Life of Samuel Johnson, p. 279. 



510 THE REVOLUTION. 

gust, Dr. Mayhew preached a sermon in the West 
Meeting-house from the text, " I would they were 
even cut off which trouble you." ^ That this dis- 
course was in fact an incendiary harangue is demon- 
strated by what followed. At nightfall on the 26th 
a fierce mob forced the cellars of the comptroller of 
the customs, and got drunk on the spirits stored with- 
in ; then they went on to Hutchinson's dwelling : 
" The doors were immediately split to pieces with 
broad axes, and a way made there, and at the win- 
dows, for the entry of the mob ; which poured in, and 
filled, in an instant, every room. . . . They continued 
their possession until daylight ; destroyed . . . every- 
thing . . . except the walls, . . . and had begun to 
break away the brick- work." ^ His irreplaceable col- 
lection of original papers was thrown into the street ; 
and when a bystander interfered in the hojje of saving 
some of them, " answer was made, that it had been 
resolved to destroy everything in the house ; and such 
resolve should be carried to effect." ^ Malice so bit- 
ter bears the peculiar ecclesiastical tinge, and is ex- 
plained by the confession of one of the ring-leaders, 
who, when subsequently arrested, said he had been 
excited by the sermon, "and that he thought he was 
doing God service." ^ 

The outbreak met with general condemnation, and 
Dr. Mayhew, who saw he had gone too far, tried to 
excuse himself : — 

1 Galatians v. 12. 2 Hutch. Hist. iii. 124. 

8 Idem, p. 125, note. * Idem, p. 123. 



THE REVOLUTION. 511 

" Sir, — I take the freedom to write you a few 
lines, by way of condolence, on account of the almost 
unparalleled outrages committed at your house last 
evening ; and the great damage which I understand 
you have suffered thereby. God is my witness, that, 
from the bottom of my heart, I detest these proceed- 
ings ; that I am most sincerely grieved at them, and 
have a deep sympathy with you and your distressed 
family on this occasion." ' 

Nevertheless, the repeal of the Stamp Act, which 
pacified the laity, left tlie clergy as hot as ever ; and 
so early as 1768, when no one outside of the inmost 
ecclesiastical circle yet dreamed of independence, but 
when the Rev. Andrew Eliot thought the erection of 
the bishopric was near, he frankly told Hollis he an- 
ticipated war. 

" You will see by this pamphlet, how we are ca- 
joled. A colony bishop is to be a more innocent 
creature than ever a bishop was, since diocesan bish- 
ops were introduced to lord it over God's heritage. 
. . . Can the A-b-p, and his tools, think to impose on 
the colonists by these artful representations. . . . The 
people of New England are greatly alarmed : the 
arrival of a bishop would raise them as much as any 
one thing. . . . Our General Court is now sitting. 
I have hinted to some of the members, that it will be 
proper for them to express their fears of the setting 
up an hierarchy here. I am well assured a motion 
will be made to this purpose. ... I may be mistaken, 
^ Mayhew to Hutchinson. Life of Maykew, p. 420. 



512 THE REVOLUTION. 

but I am persuaded the dispute between Great Britain 
and her colonies will never be amicably settled. . . . 
I sent you a few hasty remarks on the A-b-p's sermon. 
... I am more and more convinced of the meanness, 
art — if he was not in so high a station, I should say, 
falsehood — of that Arch-Pr-1-te." ^ 

An established priesthood is naturally the firmest 
support of despotism ; but the course of events made 
that of Massachusetts revolutionary. This was a social 
factor whose importance it is hard to overestimate ; for 
though the influence of the elders had much declined 
during the eighteenth century, their political power 
was still immense ; and it is impossible to measure 
the degree in which the drift of feeling toward inde- 
pendence would have been arrested had they been 
thoroughly loyal. At all events, the evidence tends 
to show that it is most improbable the first blood 
would have been shed in the streets of Boston had it 
been the policy of Great Britain to conciliate the 
Congregational Church ; if, for example, the liberals 
had been forced to meet the issue of taxation upon 
a statute designed to raise a revenue for the mainte- 
nance of the evangelical clergy. How potent an ally 
King George lost by incurring their hatred may be 
judged by the devotion of the Episcopalian pastors, 
many of whom were of the same blood as their Cal- 
vinistic brethren, often, like Cutler and Johnson, con- 
verts. They all showed the same intensity of feeling ; 

1 Thomas Seeker. Andrew Eliot to Thomas Hollis, Jan. 5^ 
1768. Mass. Hist. Coll. fourth series, iv. 422. 



THE REVOLUTION. 513 

all were Tories, not one wavered ; and they boasted 
that they were long able to hold their parishioners in 
check. 

In September, 1765, those of Connecticut wrote to 
the secretai'y, " although the commotions and disaf- 
fection in this country are very great at present, rel- 
ative to what they call the imposition of stamp duties, 
yet . . . the people of the Church of England, in 
general, in this colony, as we hear, . . . and those, in 
particular, under our respective charges, are of a con- 
trary temper and conduct ; esteeming it nothing short 
of rebellion to speak evil of dignities, and to avow 
opposition to this last act of Parliament. . . . 

" We think it our incumbent duty to warn our 
hearers, in particular, of the unreasonableness and 
wickedness of their taking the least part in any tu- 
mult or opposition to his majesty's acts, and we have 
obvious reasons for the fullest persuasion, that they 
will steadily behave themselves as true and faithful 
subjects to his majesty's person and government." ^ 

Even so late as April, 1775, Mr, Caner, at Boston, 
felt justified in making a very similar report to the 
society : " Our clergy have in the midst of these con- 
fusions behaved I think with remarkable prudence. 
None of them have been hindered from exercising the 
duties of their office since Mt Peters, tho' many of 
them have been much threat'ned ; and as their people 
have for the most part remained firm and steadfast in 
their loyalty and attachment to goverment, the clergy 
^ Conn. Church Doc. ii. 81. 



514 THE REVOLUTION. 

feel themselves supported by a conscious satisfaction 
that their labors have not been in vain." ^ 

Nor did they shrink because of danger from setting 
an example of passive obedience to their congrega- 
tions. The Rev. Dr. Beach graduated at Yale in 
1721 and became the Congregational pastor of New- 
town. He was afterward converted, and during the 
war was forbidden to read the prayers for the royal 
family ; but he replied, " that he would do his duty, 
preach and pray for the king, till the rebels cut out 
his tongue." ^ 

In estimating the energy of a social force, such as 
ecclesiasticism, the indirect are often more striking 
than the direct manifestations of power, and this is 
eminently true of Massachusetts ; for, notwithstand- 
ing her ministers had always been astute and inde- 
fatigable politicians, their greatest triumphs were in- 
variably won by some layman whose mind they had 
moulded and whom they put forward as their cham- 
pion. From John Winthrop, who was the first, an 
almost unbroken line of these redoubtable partisans 
stretched down to the Revolution, where it ended with 
him who is perhaps the most celebrated of all. 

Samuel Adams has been called the last of the 
Puritans. He was indeed the incarnation of those 
qualities which led to eminence under the theocracy. 
A rigid Calvinist, reticent, cool, and brave, matchless 
in intrigue, and tireless in purpose, his cause was al- 
ways holy, and therefore sanctified the means. 

1 Perry's Coll. iii. 579. 

* O'Callaghan Documents, iii. 1053, 8vo ed. 



THE REVOLUTION. 515 

Professor Hosmer thus describes him : " It was, 
however, as a manager of men that Samuel Adams 
was greatest. Such a master of the methods by which 
a town-meeting may be swayed, the world has never 
seen. On the best of terms with the people, the ship- 
yard men, the distillers, the sailors, as well as the 
merchants and ministers, he knew precisely what 
springs to touch. He was the prince of canvassers, 
the very king of the caucus, of which his father was 
the inventor. ... As to his tact, was it ever sur- 
passed ? " ^ A bigot in religion, he had the flexi- 
bility of a Jesuit ; and though he abhorred Episco- 
palians, he proposed that Mr. Duche should make the 
opening prayer for Congress, in the hope of soothing 
the southern members. Strict in all ceremonial ob- 
servances, he was loose in money matters ; yet even 
here he stood within the pale, for Dr. Cotton ISIather 
was looser,^ who was the most orthodox of divines. 

The clergy instinctively clave to him, and gave 
him their fullest confidence. When there was any im- 
portant work to do they went to him, and he never 
failed them. On January 5, 1768, the Rev. Dr. Eliot 
told PloUis he had suggested to some of the members 
of the legislature to remonstrate against the bishops.'^ 
A week later the celebrated letter of instructions of 
the house to the agent, De Berdt, was reported, which 
was written by Adams ; and it is interesting to ob- 

1 Hosmer's Samuel Adams, p. 363. 

2 See Letter on behalf of Ur. Cotton Mather to Sewall, Mass. 
Hist. Coll. fourth series, ii. 122. 

' Mass. Hist. Coll. fourth series, iv. 422. 



516 THE REVOLUTION. 

serve liow, in the midst of a most vigorous protest on 
the subject, he broke out : " We hope in God such an 
establishment will never take place in America, and 
we desire you would strenuously oppose it." ^ 

The subtle but unmistakable flavor of ecclesiasti- 
cism pervades his whole long agitation. He handled 
the newspapers with infinite skill, and the way in 
which he used the toleration granted the Canadian 
Catholics after the conquest, as a goad wherewith 
to inflame the dying Puritan fanaticism, was worthy 
of St. Ignatius. He moved for the committee who 
reported the resolutions of the town of Boston in 
1772 ; his spirit inspired them, and in these also the 
grievance of Episcopacy plays a large part. How 
strong his prejudices were may be gathered from a 
few words : " We think therefore that every design 
for establishing ... a bishop in this province, is a 
design both against our civil and religious rights." ^ 

The liberals, as loyal subjects of Great Britain, 
grieved over her policy as the direst of misfortunes, 
which indeed they might be driven to resist, but which 
they strove to modify. 

Washington wrote in 1774 : " I am well satisfied, 
. . . that it is the ardent wish of the warmest advo- 
cates for liberty, that peace and tranquillity, upon con- 
stitutional grounds, may be restored, and the horrors 
of civil discord prevented." " Jefferson affirmed ; 

1 Mass. State Papers, 1765-1775, p. 132. 

2 Votes and Proceediiigs of Boston, Nov. 20, 1772, p. 28. 

* Washington to Mackenzie. WashingtorCs Writings, ii. 402. 



THE REVOLUTION. 517 

" Before the commencement of hostilities ... I never 
had heard a whisper of a disposition to separate from 
Great Britain ; and after that, its possibility was con- 
templated with affliction by all." While John Adams 
solemnly declared : " For my own part, there was not 
a moment during the Revolution, when I would not 
have given everything I possessed for a restoration 
to the state of things before the contest began, pro- 
vided we could have had a sufficient security for its 
continuance." ^ 

In such feelings Samuel Adams had no share. In 
each renewed aggression he saw the error of his natu- 
ral enemy, which brought ever nearer the realization 
of the dream of independence he had inherited from 
the past ; for the same fierce passion burned within 
him that had made Endicott mutilate his flag, and 
Leverett read his king's letter with his hat on ; and 
the guns of Lexington were music in his ears. 

He was not a lawyer, nor a statesman, in the true 
meaning of the word, but he was a consummate agi- 
tator ; and if this be remembered, his career becomes 
clear. When he conceived the idea of the possibility 
of independence is uncertain ; probably soon after the 
passage of the Stamp Act, but the evidence is strong 
that so early as 1768 he had deliberately resolved to 
precipitate some catastrophe which would make recon- 
ciliation impossible, and obviously an armed collision 
would have suited his purpose best. 

Troops were then first ordered to Boston, and at 
^ Note of Sparks, Washington' s Writings, ii. 501. 



618 THE REVOLUTION. 

one moment he was tempted to cause theii* landing to 
be resisted. An old affidavit is still extant, presum- 
ably truthful enough, which brings him vividly be- 
fore the mind as he went about the town lashing up 
the people. 

" Mr. Samuel Adams . . . happened to join the 
same party . . . trembling and in great agitation. . . . 
The informant heard the said Samuel Adams then 
say . . . 'If you are men, behave like men. Let us 
take up arms immediately, and be free, and seize all 
the king's officers. We shall have thirty thousand 
men to join us from the country.' . . . And before the 
arrival of the troops ... at the house of the inform- 
ant . . . the said Samuel Adams said : ' We will not 
submit to any tax, nor become slaves. . . . The coun- 
try was first settled by our ancestors, therefore we are 
free and want no king.' . . . The informant further 
sayeth, that about a fortnight before the troops ar- 
rived, the aforesaid Samuel Adams, being at the house 
of the informant, the informant asked him what he 
thought of the times. The said Adams answered, 
with great alertness, that, on lighting the beacon, we 
should be joined with thirty thousand men from the 
country with their knapsacks and bayonets fixed, and 
added, ' We will destroy every soldier that dare put 
his foot on shore. His majesty has no right to send 
troops here to invade the country, and I look upon 
them as foreign enemies ! ' " i 

Maturer reflection must have convinced him his 
1 Wells's Samuel Adams, i. 210, 211. 



THE REVOLUTION. 519 

design was impracticable, for he certainly abandoned 
it, and the two regiments disembarked in peace ; but 
their position was unfortunate. Together they were 
barely a thousand strong, and were completely at the 
mercy of the populous and hostile province they had 
been sent to awe. 

The temptation to a bold and unscrupulous revolu- 
tionary leader must have been intense. Apparently it 
needed but a spark to cause an explosion ; the rabble 
of Boston could be fierce and dangerous when roused, 
as had been proved by the sack of Hutchinson's house ; 
and if the soldiers could be goaded into firing on the 
citizens, the chances were they would be annihilated 
in the rising which would follow, when a rupture 
would be inevitable. But even supposing the militia 
abstained from participating in the outbreak, and the 
tumult were suppressed, the indignation at the slaugh- 
ter would be deep enough to sustain him in mak- 
ing demands which the government could not grant. 

Hutchinson and the English officers understood the 
danger, and for many months the discipline was ex- 
emplary, but precautions were futile. Though he 
knew full well how to be all things to all men, the nat- 
ural affiliations of Sanmel Adams were with the clergy 
and the mob, and in the sliip-yards and rope- walks he 
reigned supreme. Nor was he of a temper to shrink 
from using to the utmost the opportunity his adversa- 
ries had put in his hands, and he forthwith began 
a series of inflammatory appeals in the newspapers, 
whereof this is a specimen : " And are the inhabitants 



620 THE REVOLUTION. 

of this town still to be affronted in the nio^ht as well 
as the day by soldiers arm'd with muskets and fix'd 
bayonets ? . . . Will the spirits of people, as yet 
unsubdued by tyranny, unaw'd by the menaces of 
arbitary power, submit to be govern'd by military 
force?"! 

In 1770 it was notorious that " endeavors had been 
systematically pursued for many months, by certain 
busy characters, to excite quarrels, rencounters, and 
combats, single or compound, in the night, between 
the inhabitants of the lower class and the soldiers, 
and at all risks to enkindle an immortal hatred be- 
tween them." 2 And it is curious to observe how the 
British always quarrelled with the laborers about 
the wharves ; and how these, the closest friends of 
Adams, were all imbued with the theory he main- 
tained, that the military could not use their weapons 
without the order of a civil magistrate. Little by 
little the animosity increased, until on the 2d of 
March there was a very serious fray at Gray's rope- 
walk, which was begun by one of the hands, who 
knocked down two soldiers who spoke to him in the 
street. Although Adams afterward labored to con- 
vince the public that the tragedy which happened 
three days later was the result of a deliberately ma- 
tured conspiracy to murder the citizens for revenge, 
there is nothing whereon to base such a charge ; on 
the contrary, the evidence tends to exonerate the 

1 Vindex, Boston Gazette, Dec. 5, 1768. 

2 Autobiography of John Adams. Works of J. Adams, ii. 229. 



THE REVOLUTION. 521 

troops, and the verdicts show the opinion of the ju- 
ries. There was exasperation on both sides, but the 
rabble were not restrained by discipline, and on the 
night of the 5th of March James Crawford swore he 
he saw at Calf's corner " about a dozen with sticks, in 
Quaker Lane and Green's Lane, met many going to- 
ward King Street. Very great sticks, pretty large 
cudgells, not common walking canes. . . . At Swing 
bridge the people were walking from all quarters with 
sticks. I was afraid to go home, . . . the streets in 
such commotion as I hardly ever saw in my life. Un- 
common sticks such as a man would pull out of an 
hedge. . . . Thomas Knight at his own door, 8 or 
10 passed with sticks or clubs and one of them said 
'D — n their bloods, let us go and attack the main 
guard first.'" ^ The crown witnesses testified that 
the sentry was surrounded by a crowd of thirty or 
forty, who pelted him with pieces of ice "hard and 
large enough to hurt any man ; as big as one's fist." 
And h« said "he was afraid, if the boys did not 
disperse, there would be " trouble.^ A\ hen the guard 
came to his help the mob grew still more violent, 
yelling " bloody backs," " lobster scoundrels," " damn 
you, fire ! why don't you fire ? " striking them with 
sticks. 

" Did you observe anybody strike Montgomery, or 
was a club thrown? The stroke came from a stick 
or club that was in somebody's hand, and the blow 

1 Kidder's Massacre, p. 10. 
a Idem, p. 138. 



522 THE REVOLUTION. 

struck his gun and his arm." " Was he knocked 
down ? . . . He fell, I am sure. . . . His gun flew 
out of hand, and as he stooped to take it up, he fell 
himself. . . . Was any number of people standing 
near the man that struck his gun? Yes, a whole 
crowd, fifty or sixty." ^ When the volley came at last 
the rabble fell back, and the 29th was rapidly formed 
before the main guard, the front rank kneeling, that 
the fire might sweep the street. And now when every 
bell was tolling, and the town was called to arms, 
and infuriated men came pouring in by thousands, 
Hutchinson showed he had inherited the blood of his 
great ancestress, who feared little upon earth ; but 
then, indeed, their adversaries have seldom charged 
the Puritans with cowardice in fight. Coming quickly 
to the council chamber he passed into the balcony, 
which overhung the kneeling regiment and the armed 
and maddened crowd, and he spoke with such calm- 
ness and courage that even then he was obeyed. He 
promised that justice should be done and he com- 
manded the people to disperse. Preston and his men 
were at once surrendered to the authorities to await 
their trial. 

The next day Adams was in his glory. The meet- 
ing in the morning was as wax between his fingers, 
and his friend, the Rev. Dr. Cooper, opened it with 
fervent prayer. A committee was at once appointed 
to demand the withdrawal of the troops, but Hutchin- 
son thought he had no power and that Gage alone 
^ Kidder's Massacre, pp. 138, 139. 



THE REVOLUTION. 523 

could give the order. Nevertheless, after a conference 
with Colonel Dalrymple he was induced to propose 
that the 29th shoidd be sent to the Castle, and the 
14th put under strict restraint.^ To the daring agita- 
tor it seemed at last his hour was come, for the whole 
people were behind him, and Hutchinson himself 
says " their spirit " was " as high as was the spirit 
of their ancestors when they imprisoned Andros." 
As the committee descended the steps of the State 
House to go to the Old South where they were to 
report, the dense crowd made way for them, and 
Samuel Adams as he walked bare-headed through 
their lines continually bowed to right and left, repeat- 
ing the catchword, " Both regiments or none." His 
touch on human passions was unerring, for when the 
lieutenant-governor's reply was read, the great assem- 
bly answered with a mighty shout, " Both regiments 
or none," and so instructed he returned. Then the 
nature of the man shone out ; the handful of troops 
were helpless, and he was as inflexible as steel. The 
thin, strong, determined, gray-eyed Puritan stood be- 
fore Hutchinson, inwardly exulting as he marked his 
features change under the torture. "A multitude 
highly incensed now wait the result of this applica- 
tion. The voice of ten thousand freemen demands 
that both regiments be forthwith removed. . . . Fail 
not then at your peril to comply with this requisi- 
tion ! " 2 It was the spirit of Norton and of Endicott 

^ Kidder's Massacre, p. 43. 

^ Hosmer's Samuel Adams, p. 173. 



524 THE REVOLUTION. 

alive again, and he was flushed with the same stern 
triumph at the sight of his victim's pain : " It was 
then, if fancy deceived me not, I observed his knees 
to tremble. I thought I saw his face grow pale (and 
I enjoyed the sight)." ^ 

Probably nothing prevented a complete rupture but 
the hopeless weakness of the garrison, for Hutchinson, 
feeling the decisive moment had come, was full of 
fight. He saw that to yield would destroy his author- 
ity, and he opposed concession, but he stood alone, the 
officers knew their position was untenable, and the 
council was unanimous against him. " The L* G. en- 
deavoured to convince them of the ill consequence of 
this advice, and kept them until late in the evening, 
the people remaining assembled ; but the council were 
resolute. Their advice, therefore, he communicated 
to Co^ Dalrymple, accompanied with a declaration, 
that he had no authority to order the removal of the 
troops. This part Col. D. was dissatisfied with, and 
urged the L* G. to withdraw it, but he refused, and 
the regiments were removed. He was much dis- 
tressed, but he brought it all upon himself by his offer 
to remove one of the regiments. No censure, however, 
was passed upon him." ^ 

Had the pacification of his country been the object 
near his heart, Samuel Adams, after his victory, would 
have abstained from any act however remotely tend- 
ing to influence the course of justice ; for he must 

1 Adams to Warren. Wells's Samuel Adams, i. 324. 
^ Diary and Letters of T". Hutchinson, p. 80. 



THE REVOLUTION. 525 

have known that it was only by such conduct the col- 
onists could inspire respect for the motives which 
actuated them in their resistance. A capital sentence 
would have been doubly unfortunate, for had it been 
executed it would have roused all England ; while 
had the king pardoned the soldiers, as assuredly he 
would have done, a deep feeling of wrong would have 
rankled in America. 

A fanatical and revolutionary demagogue, on the 
other hand, would have longed for a conviction, not 
only to compass his ends as a politician, but to glut 
his hate as a zealot. 

Samuel Adams was a taciturn, secretive man, whose 
tortuous course would have been hard to follow a cen- 
tury ago ; now the attempt is hopeless. Yet there is 
one inference it seems permissible to draw : his ad- 
mirers have always boasted that he was the inspira- 
tion of the town meetings, presumably, therefore, the 
the votes passed at them may be attributed to his 
manipulation. And starting from this point, with 
the help of Hutchinson and his own writings, it is 
still possible to discern the outlines of a policy well 
worthy of a theocratic statesman. 

The March meeting began on the 12th. On the 
13th it was resolved : — 

" That be and they hereby are appointed a com- 
mittee for and in behalf of the town to find out who 
those persons are that were the perpetrators of the 
horred murders and massacres done and committed in 
King Street on several of the inhabitants in the even- 



526 THE REVOLUTION. 

insf of the 5*- instant and take such examinations and 
depositions as they can procure, and lay the whole 
thereof before the grand inquest in order that such 
perpetrators may be indicted and brought to tryal for 
the same, and upon indictments being found, said com- 
mittee are desired to prepare matters for the king's 
attorney, to attend at their tryals in the superior 
court, subpoena all the witnesses, and do everything 
necessary for bringing those murtherers to that pun- 
ishment for such crimes, as the laws of God and man 
require." ^ 

A day or two afterward a number of Adams's 
friends, among whom were some of the members of 
this committee, dined together, and Hutchinson tells 
what he persuaded them to do. 

" The time for holding the superior court for the 
county of Suffolk was the next week after the tragical 
action in King Street. Although bills were found by 
the grand jury, yet the court, considering the disor- 
dered state of the town, had thought fit to continue 
the trials over to the next term, when the minds of 
people would be more free from prejudice." " A 
considerable number of the most active persons in 
all publick measures of the town, having dined to- 
gether, went in a body from table to the superior 
court then sitting, and Mr. Adams, at their head and 
in behalf of the town, pressed the bringing on the 
trial the same term with so much spirit, that the 
judges did not think it advisable to abide by their own 
1 Records of Boston, v. 232. 



THE REVOLUTION. 527 

order, but appointed a day for the trials, and ad- 
journed the court for that purpose." ^ 

The justices must afterward have grown ashamed 
of their cowardice, for Rex v. Preston did not come 
on until the autumn, and altogether very little was ac- 
complished by these attempts to interfere with the due 
administration of the law. " A committee had been 
appointed by the town to assist in the prosecution of 
the soldiers . . . but this was irregular. The courts, 
according to the practice in the province, required no 
prosecutors but the officers of the crown ; much less 
would they have thought it proper for the principal 
town in the province to have brought all its weight, 
which was very great, into court against the prison- 
ers." 2 

Nevertheless, Adams had by no means exhausted 
his resources, for it was possible so to inflame the 
public mind that dispassionate juries could hardly be 
obtained. 

At the same March meeting another committee 
was named, who were to obtain a " particular account 
of all proceedings relative to the massacre in King 
Street on Monday night last, that a full and just rep- 
resentation may be made thereof ? " ^ The reason as- 
signed for so unwonted a proceeding as the taking of 
ex parte testimony by a popular assembly concerning 
alleged murders, for which men were to be pres- 

1 Hutch. Hist. iii. 285, 286 and note. 

2 Idem, iii. 286, note. 

8 Kidder's Massacre, p. ~Z. 



628 THE REVOLUTION. 

ently tried for their lives, was the necessity for con- 
troverting the aspersions of the British officials ; but 
the probable truth of this explanation must be judged 
by the course actually pursued. On the 19th the re- 
port vi^as made, consisting of " A Short Narrative 
of the Horrid Massacre in Boston," together with a 
number of depositions ; and though perhaps it was 
natural, under the circumstances, for such a pamphlet 
to have been highly partisan, it was unnatural for its 
authors to have assumed the burden of proving that a 
deliberately planned conspiracy had existed between 
the civilians and the military to murder the citizens ; 
especially as this tremendous charge rested upon no 
better foundation than the fantastic falsehoods of " a 
French boy, whose evidence appeared to the justice 
so improbable, and whose character was so infamous, 
that the justice, who was one of the most zealous in 
the cause of liberty, refused to issue a warrant to 
apprehend his master, against whom he swore." ^ 
" Then I went up to the custom - house door and 
knocked, ... I saw my master and Mr. Munroe come 
down-stairs, and go into a room ; when four or five 
men went up stairs, pulling and hauling me after 
them. . . . When I was carried into the chamber, there 
was but one light in the room, and that in the corner 
of the chamber, when I saw a tall man loading a gun 
(then I saw two guns in the room) . . . there was a 
number of gentlemen in the room. After the gun was 
loaded, the tall man gave it to me, and told me to fire, 
1 Hutch. Hist. iii. 279, 280. 



THE REVOLUTION. 529 

and said he would kill me if I did not ; I told him 
I would not. He drawing a sword out of his cane, 
told me, if I did not fire it, he would run it through 
my guts. The man putting the gun out of the win- 
dow, it being a little open, I fired it sideway up the 
street ; the tall man then loaded the gixn again. ... I 
told him I would not fire again ; he told me again, he 
would run me through the guts if I did not. Upon 
which I fired the same way up the street. After I 
fired the second gun, I saw my master in the room ; 
he took a gun and pointed it out of the window ; I 
heard the gun go off. Then a tall man came and 
clapped me on the shoulders above and below stairs, 
and said, that 's my good boy, I '11 give you some 
money to-morrow. . . . And I ran home as fast as I 
could, and sat up all night in my master's kitchen. 
And further say, that my master licked me the next 
night for telling Mrs. Waldron about his firing out 
of the custom-house. And for fear that I should be 
licked again, I did deny all that I said before Justice 
Quincy, which I am very sorry for.^ . . . 

his 

"Charlotte + Bourgate." 

mark. 

While it is inconceivable that a cool and sagacious 
politician, whose object was to convince Parliament of 
the good faith of Massachusetts, should have relied 
upon such incredible statements to sway the minds of 
English statesmen and lawyers, it is equally incon- 
8 Kidder's Massacre, p. 82. Deposition 58. 



530 THE REVOLUTION. 

ceivable he should not have known they were admi- 
rably adapted to still further exasperate an already 
excited people ; and that such was his purpose must 
be inferred from the immediate publication of the 
substance of this affidavit in the newspapers.^ 

Without doubt a vote was passed on the 26th of 
March, a week after the committee had presented 
their report, desiring them to reserve all the printed 
copies not sent to Europe, as their distribution might 
tend to bias the juries ; but even had this precaution 
been observed, it came too late, for the damage was 
done when the Narrative was read in Faneuil Hall; 
in fact, however, the order was eluded, for " many 
copies, notwithstanding, got abroad, and some of a 
second edition were sent from England, long before 
the trials of the officer and soldiers came on." ^ And 
at this cheap rate a reputation for magnanimity was 
earned. 

How thoroughly the clergy sympathized with their 
champion appears from their clamors for blood. As 
the time drew near it was rumored Hutchinson would 
reprieve the prisoners, should they be convicted, till 
the king's pleasure could be known. Then Dr. 
Chauncy, the senior minister of Boston, cried out in 
his pulpit : " Surely he would not counteract the op- 
eration of the law, both of God and of man! Surely 
he would not suffer the town and land to lie under 
the defilement of blood ! Surely he would not make 

1 Boston Gazette, March 19, 1770. 

2 Hutch. Hist. iii. 279. 



THE REVOLUTION. 531 

himself a partaker in the guilt of murder, by putting 
a stop to the shedding of their blood, who have mur- 
derously spilt the blood of others ! " ^ 

Adams attended when the causes were heard and 
took notes of the evidence ; and one of the few occa^ 
sions in his long life on which his temper seems to 
have got beyond control was when the accused were 
acquitted. His writings betray unmistakable cha- 
grin ; and nothing is more typical of the man, or of 
the clerical atmosphere wherein he had been bred, 
than his comments upon the testimony on which the 
lives of his enemies hung. His piety caused him to 
doubt those whose evidence was adverse to his wishes, 
though they appeared to be trying to speak the truth. 
" The credibility of a witness perhaps cannot be im- 
peach'd in court, unless he has been convicted of per- 
jury : but an immoral man, for instance one who will 
commonly prophane the name of his maker, certainly 
cannot be esteemed of equal credit by a jury, with one 
who fears to take that sacred name in vain : It is im- 
possible he should in the mind of any man." ^ 

And yet this rigid Calvinist, this incarnation of 
ecclesiasticism, had no scruple in propagating the 
palpable and infamous lies of Charlotte Bourgate, 
when by so doing he thought it possible to further his 
own ends. He was bitterly mortified, for he had 
been foiled. Yet, though he had failed in precipitat- 
ing war, he had struck a telling blow, and he had no 

1 Hutch. Hist. iii. 329, note. 

2 Boston Gazette, Jan. 21, 1771. 



532 THE REVOLUTION. 

reason to repine. Probably no single event, before 
fighting actually began, left so deep a sear as the Bos- 
ton massacre ; and many years later John Adams 
gave it as his deliberate opinion that, on the night of 
the 5th of March, 1770, " the foundation of American 
independence was laid." Nor was the full realization 
of his hopes long delayed. Gage occupied Boston in 
1774. During the winter the tireless agitator, from 
his place in the Provincial Congress, warned the peo- 
ple to fight any force sent more than ten miles from 
the town ; and so when Paul Revere galloped through 
Middlesex on the night of the 18th of April he found 
the farmers ready. Samuel Adams had slept at the 
house of the Rev. Jonas Clark. Before sunrise the 
detachment sent to seize him was close at hand. While 
they advanced, he escaped ; and as he walked across 
the fields toward Woburn, to the sound of the guns of 
Lexington, he exclaimed, in a burst of passionate tri- 
umph, " What a glorious morning is this ! " 

Massachusetts became the hot-bed of rebellion be- 
cause of this unwonted alliance between liberality and 
sacerdotalism. Liberality was her birthright ; for lib- 
eralism is the offspring of intellectual variation, which 
makes mutual toleration of opinion a necessity ; but 
that her church should have been radical at this crisis 
was due to the action of a long chain of memorable 
causes. 

The exiles of the Reformation were enthusiasts, for 
none would then have dared defy the pains of heresy, 
in whom the instinct onward was feebler than the fear 



THE REVOLUTION. 533 

of death ; yet when the wanderers reached America 
the mental growth of the majority had cuhuinated, 
and they had passed into the age of routine ; and ex- 
actly in proportion as their youthful inspiration had 
been fervid was their later formalism intense. But 
similar causes acting on the human mechanism pro- 
duce like results ; hence bigotry and ambition fed by 
power led to persecution. Then, as the despotism of 
the preachers deepened, their victims groaning in 
their dungeons, or furrowed by their lash, implored 
the aid of England, who, in defence of freedom and 
of law, crushed the theocracy at a blow. And the 
clergy knew and hated their enemy from the earliest 
days ; it was this bitter theological jealousy which 
flamed within Endicott when he mutilated his flag, 
and within Leverett when he insulted Randolph ; it 
was a rapacious lust for power and a furious detesta- 
tion of rival priests which maddened the Mathers in 
their onslaught upon Dudley, which burned undimmed 
in Mayhew and Cooper, and in their champion, Sam- 
uel Adams, and which at last made the hierarchy cast 
in its lot with an ally more dangerous far than those 
prelates whom it deemed its foe. For no church can 
preach liberality and not be liberalized. Of a truth 
the momentary spasm may pass which made these 
conservatives progressive, and they may once more 
manifest their reactionary nature, but, nevertheless, 
the impulsion shall have been given to that automatic, 
yet resistless, machinery which produces innovation ; 
wherefore, in the next generation, the great liberal 



534 THE REVOLUTION. 

secession from the Congregational communion broke 
the ecclesiastical power forever. And so, through 
toil and suffering, through martyrdoms and war, the 
Puritans wrought out the ancient destiny which fated 
them to wander as outcasts to the desolate New Eng- 
land shore ; there, amidst hardship and apparent fail- 
ure, they slowly achieved their civil and religious lib- 
erty, and conceived that constitutional system which 
is the root of our national life ; and there in another 
century the liberal commonwealth they had builded 
led the battle against the spread of human oppression ; 
and when the war of slavery burst forth her soldiers 
rightly were the first to fall ; for it is her children's 
heritage that, wheresoever on this continent blood 
shall flow in defence of personal freedom, there must 
the sons of Massachusetts surely be. 



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